June 9, 2026 Joint meeting of the Council, Shoreline Regional Park, & Capital Improvements Authority

Video

Agenda

• 1. CALL TO ORDER/PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE/ROLL CALL: Meeting call to order, pledge of allegiance, and roll call (00:00:00)
• 2. CLOSED SESSION REPORT: City Attorney reports no reportable action from closed session (00:01:21)
• 3.1 Pride Month Proclamation: Reading and presentation of the Pride Month Proclamation (00:01:31)
• 3.2 Juneteenth Proclamation: Reading and presentation of the Juneteenth Proclamation (00:05:37)
• 4. CONSENT CALENDAR: Approval of the consent calendar, excluding pulled items 4.1 and 4.2 (00:10:43)
• 4.1 & 4.2 Pulled Consent Calendar Items: Public comments and voting on pulled items 4.1 (BMR Housing Program) and 4.2 (Housing Development Administrative Approval) (00:15:00)
• 5. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE PUBLIC ON NONAGENDIZED ITEMS: Public comment period for items not on the agenda (00:20:51)
• 6.1 City of Mountain View Vacancies and Recruitment and Retention Efforts: Public hearing to receive a report on city vacancies, recruitment, and retention efforts (00:27:08)
• 6.2 Fiscal Year 2026-27 Recommended Budget: Staff presentation on the recommended city budget for Fiscal Year 2026-27 (00:28:44)

Transcript

[not in the video above — from the city's archive recording]
Councilmember Emily Ramos: All right, let's get started. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our closed session. City Attorney Lowe. We'll make a closed session announcement, and then we will welcome public comment on the item listed for closed session.

[not in the video above — from the city's archive recording]
City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Good evening, mayor and council members. There is one item on this evening's quote session agenda. Item 2. is a meeting to consider appointment of a city attorney pursuant to government code section 54957B1.

[not in the video above — from the city's archive recording]
Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you. Would any member of the public joining us virtually, or in person? Like to provide comment on the closed session item listed on today's agenda. If so, please click the raise hand button in zoo or submit a speaker card to the city clerk. We will take in-person speakers first. Each speaker will have 3 minutes. We have no in-person comments. We will now take virtual speakers. See none. We, uh, the council will now recess to the plaza conference room for closed session and return to the council chambers at close at the close to continue to the regular session.

[00:44:08] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Okay, everyone. We are back from closed session. Okay, so, good evening, everyone. Welcome to the joint meeting of the Mountain View City Council, Shoreline Regional Park Community, and City of Mountain View Capitol Improvements Financing Authority of June 9, 2026. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and Tutor Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The city clerk will take attendance by roll call. Council member Hicks? Here. Council member Kameh here. Council member McAllister. Yep. Council member Ramirez? Here. Coms member Showalter. Here. Vice Mayor Clerk. Beer. Miramos? Here. You have a quor?

[00:45:05] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Wonderful. City Attorney Logue, do you have a closed session report?

[00:45:10] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: No final action was taken in close session this evening.

[00:45:14] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Great. That leads us to item three, 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 will now go on to item 3.one. Pride Month Proclamation. Yay. Um, we are happy to be joined this evening by Saudi Surubin, Sarah Fernando, and Becca Ponce from the Santa Clara County Office of LGBTQ Affairs to accept this proclamation. Would you all join me at the lectern? All right. The proclamation reads, Whereas, the city of Mountain View is committed to supporting dignity, equity, and visibility for all people in the community, and whereas Mountain View celebrates the history and diversity of our city's LGBTQIA plus community, and promotes a society, in which all residents can live free from discrimination, and... whereas, the city will host its second citywide prize celebration called Together in Pride on June 20th. The event will feature a flag raising ceremony. Other activities will include performances by artists, community booths, roaming, uh, yeah, roaming, entertainment, family fun zones, and a community art project, and, whereas, flying the rainbow flag at City Hall, throughout the month of June, further symbolizes the city's celebration of diversity and support for the city's LGPTQIA plus residents. Now, therefore, I, Emily Ann Ramos, mayor of the city of Mount View, along with my colleagues on the city council, do hereby proclaim the month of June as Pride Month, and encourage all residents of Mount View to celebrate the rich diversity of our community. Saudi, would you like to say a few words?

[00:47:35] Saudi Surbin: Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, everyone. My name is Saldi Surbin. My pronoun is He Him His. I'm with the County Santa Clara Office of LGBT Affairs. Thank you for being here as we celebrate Pride Month. Pride is a beautiful reminder, the power of visibility and the strength of United community. It's a time to honor our past, celebrate our joy and reaffirm our commitment to full equality. But real support extends far beyond the flags and festivals. It lives in our policies and resources. If you are someone you love looking for support, advocacy, or community connection. I want to remind you about an incredible local resource, which is our office, Santa Clara County office of LGBT affairs, establish as historic 1st in the United States. This office acts as a dedicated champion for the health, safety, and well-being of the

[00:48:26] Saudi Surbin: LGBTQ plus residence, right here in Santa Clara County, including the city of Mountain View. From connecting community members to affirming healthcare and housing to providing a cultural company's training, the office work to work tirelessly to make sure our county is a safe to call home. Also, this June 12th, I want to invite you all. We are turning a 10-year, um, 10-year anniversary, um, since the establishment in 2016. Um, It's happening on June 12 from 5 to 8 p.m. at 70 west heading um, in San Jose. This June, let's celebrate, let's celebrate our diversity and make sure no one walks their journey alone. Check out the office of LGBT affairs. Stay connected and have a beautiful, safe Pride Month. Thank you.

[00:49:53] Councilmember Emily Ramos: All right. For our next proclamation, 3.2, Juneteenth proclamation. We are happy to be joined this evening by Jamal Williams. Uh, Kima, Egg, Boohoo, and, um, Jocelyn Dubin, co chairs of the Black Leadership Kitchen Cabinet of Silicon Valley to accept this proclamation. Would you all join me at the lectern? Hi. Absolutely. All right. The proclamation reads, whereas President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863, declaring slaves in the Confederate territory free, paving the way for the passage of the 13th Amendment, which formerly abolished slavery in the United States of America, and word about the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, was delayed by some two to two and a half years to June 19, 1865, in reaching and African Americans in the South and Southwestern United States. And, whereas, this day has a special meeting and is called Juneteenth, combining the words June and 19th, and Juneteenth is an opportunity to acknowledge a period of our history that shaped and continues to influence our society today, a time to honor and pay respects for the sufferings of slavery, and, whereas, the city of Mountain View strives to be a community for all, which is to support its socioeconomic and cultural diversity. Whereas, the city of Mountain View recognizes the historical significance... of the Juneteenth day to the United States, supports the continued nationwide celebration of the Juneteenth day to provide an opportunity for residents to learn more about the past, and to understand better the experiences that have shaped the United States, and recognizes that the observance of the end of slavery is part of the history and heritage of the United States. Now, therefore, I, Emily Anne Ramos, mayor of the city of Mountain View, along with my colleagues on the city council, do hereby proclaim June 19th as Juneteenth Day in the city of Mountain View. Would someone like to say a few words?

[00:52:11] Jamal Williams: Absolutely. What's up, everybody? Thank you for having us, Emily Anne. And, um, let me first say that I was given permission to speak by these two wonderful women. This is not patriarchy or misogyny at play. Um, And it's Kim good. Yeah, yeah. The black leadership kitchen cabinet continues to work tirelessly on behalf of black residents throughout the county as a coalition. We give our time and dedicate our lives and our professions to make sure that we are advocating, fighting for policy, and building community that supports and uplifts the black community. We recognize Juneteenth as our independence day. If we can imagine what it's like, what it was like during an actual independence day. Our ancestors were enslaved, but on June 19th, 1965, they finally were able to gain some semblance of freedom. And we think about Junetee, not just as a special day for black Americans, who were enslaved, but also that's at the course for all underrepresented populations in this country, and we want to make sure we recognize that milestone. We think about today, and we recognize that, um, there's a lot of, uh, a lot of our civil rights and liberties being under attack, and even at a, as a reflective time, such as this, we want to make sure that we're fighting against those that are continue to oppress and try to rewrite history. The systems and protections that black people fought and died for are under renewed threat and social progress that communities achieved, not only for themselves, but for countless others, are continuing to be rolled back. We've seen black folks continue to be, we've continued to lose black folks in this county, and we have continued to see black women being attacked over this past year. And so I ask that

[00:54:11] Jamal Williams: when we think about how we choose to move forward with policy, that we not only observe Juneteenth as a historical time. But we recognize that it sets a course forward for us, and our policy decisions, and our choices, with our funding and support for the community. So thank you again for this proclamation, and we look forward to continue working with y'all in the future.

[00:55:44] Councilmember Emily Ramos: All right. Would any member of the council like to say a few words? Council member show Walter.

[00:55:52] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I really would like to say a few words about Juneteenth. Growing up in the capital of Confederacy. I was really educated about the Civil War in a way that was just a fairy tale. And in the last 30 years, There's been an incredible movement to bring back the real history of what happened and share it with everyone. So we can all

[00:56:21] Councilmember Pat Showalter: learn about our past and think about the implications of it, and move forward from there in an honest manner. And so it just really does my hard good to see this. When I was a kid growing up, Nobody ever talked about Juneteenth. I don't think it became a very popular holiday until the last 20, 25 years. But it's a very welcome one. And particularly this year, as we celebrate our 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it's so appropriate that we remember the other parts of our history, all of them, the good, the bad, the wonderful, the ugly, and think about the whole. And, uh, so I just, I just wanted to mention that this, this, when we talk about we, the people, um, there were a lot of people, included throughout our history, that didn't get their story told. And this is about telling a very important story and not letting it die. So thank you.

[00:57:40] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Council member Show, Walter. Any other comments from my colleagues, seeing none. We will now take public comment for the presentation items with 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. Do we have any in-person speakers? All right. Now in-person speakers, we will now take virtual speakers. All right, we have a virtual speaker. Judy, can you unmute yourself? Judy? Oh, when Judy disappeared. All right, seeing that there are no other, uh, public comments, we will end item three, but with just one reminder for your call to action, call to service, call to community, on Saturday, June 20th, we're gonna have our pride event. So yay. We're so excited. So please come out for that. Um, and and show, uh, support and and celebrate our diversity in our community. Um, that will be at city, the city hall plaza, um, and it will begin at 11 a.m. So, yay. Now we'll move on to our consent calendar. These items will be approved by one motion unless any member of the council wishes to pull an item. For individual consideration. If an item is pulled from the consent calendar, it will be considered separately following approval of the balance of the consent calendar. If you would like to speak on these items, or the next item, oral communication is on non-agendite 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? Seeing none. Um, we will now go, oh. Okay, we will now, do you want to speak now, or do you want to speak after public comment? Okay. So would any member of the public joining us virtually or in person like to submit a comment on these items? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk. If, um, we will take in-person speakers first. Each speaker will have three minutes. This is for consent calendar. Do we have any speakers? No in-person speakers. All right, we will now take virtual speakers.

[01:00:35] Public Speaker: Judy? Yes, hello. Can you hear me? I got disconnected on my public comment. We can hear you.

[01:00:48] Public Speaker: Okay, um, I got disconnected on my public comment earlier, um, and I wish you would, uh, make a

[01:00:54] Public Speaker: disruption policy to cover the disruptions in virtual comments, uh, that is a state law by the beginning of July. You need to do that, because I would like to be able to speak on the last section where they were talking about the Black Pride Day and the Gay Pride Day. Will you still let me speak about that?

[01:01:15] Councilmember Emily Ramos: No, this is no longer that item for this public comment, but thank you so much.

[01:01:19] Public Speaker: Okay, well, thank you, and please work on that disruption policy, because you cost me my speech tonight, and that is viewpoint discriminate. Thank you.

[01:01:27] Councilmember Emily Ramos: you. Um, next up, we have Albert Jeans.

[01:01:35] Albert Jeans: Hi there. Just a quick comment on 4.10, the acquisition of property, uh, Tarabella. Of course, that's a really great, you know, it's a great opportunity to add to the park. You know, there's a big difference between, I think, a 2 acre park and a 3 acre, but I just wanted to point out, as Mr. Jean did in his email, that's the lot next to that. At 965, Terra Bell, it also appears to be available. And if we could add that, you know, we could we're looking out of 4 acre park, which is a really decent size. So, you know, it's pretty rare. I think that the city can put together so many lost to make a decent sized park. So I really hope the staff and the city council will move forward on that. Thank you very much.

[01:02:20] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Albert. We will now bring this back to council. Um, for council action and note that a motion to approve, the consent calendar should also include the reading of the titles of the ordinance and resolution attached to the consent calendar items 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, and 4.9. Good luck with that. The city clerk will take Row Call, as we have a council member participating remotely this evening. Council member Showalter.

[01:02:55] Councilmember Pat Showalter: All right, I guess I should have looked at how much I had to read. I would love you to do it. No, that's okay. I'm just kidding. I also want to make a couple comments. One, you know, when we get to the end of the, uh, sort of the sessions, we, we have two more meetings in this session before we have our summer break. There are always a lot of consent calendar items. And that's just kind of indicative of all the work that the city is doing, and they want to get things wrapped up enough, so they have our approval to get through the summer. So there's always a spade of them. I think the most I ever observed was 28 in one meeting. That was definitely a record. But so this time, I think we have 11. And next time, I bet, we'll have more. We'll see. But anyway, it's interesting to note that three of them are second reading of ordinances or resolutions that we've passed, which is also an indication of something that we've finished. We've completed, and that's a good thing. And I particularly wanted, I also want to mention 4.4. That's the extension of our self. shelter emergency, and that allows us to continue our programs to assist the homeless. It's very important in the social fiber of our community. on a very happy note. We are putting more money into the heat pump rebate program. It was so popular that we used up all the money. And so by putting another $500,000 in, we'll be able to take 250 more heat pumps out of people's houses in Mountain View. And the reason it's so important to take a heat pump out is because a water heater in a typical single family home uses about the same, I mean, produces about the same amount of greenhouse gases as a car does, a family car. So these reductions are very important. And it's something to be proud of. Also, as Albert Jeans mentioned, 4.10. We're purchasing some land that's going to allow for a park that's a little larger than three acres in this area. That is definitely something to celebrate. And also, I just want to thank the be pack, and James Guzimol. Congratulate you for being willing to step up and serve on the Santa Clara transportation authority by ped, advisory board. That's an important way to bring the mountain view concepts to county issues. Okay, so with that, I'm

[01:05:42] Councilmember Pat Showalter: gonna have to probably have a few sips while I do this, but I'd like to move the consenta calendar. Item 4.1, adopt an ordinance of the city council, the city of Mountain View, amending chapter 36. Article 9, Division 2, Residential Development, Below Market Rate Housing Program, of the Mountain View City Code, to modify the Below Market Rate Program, and add Section 30.40.32, governing graduated fee reduction for small projects, and finding that these code amendments are not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act, to be read in time only, further reading waived. Item 4.2. Adopt an ordinance of the city council of the city of Mountain View, amending chapter 36, as owning, of the Mountain View City Council Code, to authorize streamlined administrative approval of housing development projects that are statutorily exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, pursuing to Public Resources Code Section, to 1080.6, and to make other minor modifications to chapter 36, to align land uses in the recreation. in the residential and commercial zones, with state laws, and finding that the amendments are exempt from review under Sequa, as recommended by the environmental planning committee, to be read entitled only further reading waived. Adopt an ordinance of the city council of the city of Mountain View, amending chapter 28, subdivisions, and chapter 41, Parkland, dedication, or fees in lieu thereof, of the Mountain View City Code, to authorize streamlined administrative approval of housing development projects that are statutorily exempt from sequa, pursuant to public resources code section, 21080.66, and make other minor modifications to chapter 28, and 4 to achieve greater consistency with state laws, for internal consistency within the city code, and to align the city code with current permitting procedures and practices, and finding that amendments are exempt from review, under Sequa, to be read in title only further reading waived. Item 4.3. Adopt an ordinance of the city council of the city of Mountain View, renewing approval of the Mountain View Police Department Military Equipment Use Policy, adopting updated military equipment use policy, and finding that this action is not subject to sequa, to be read entitled only, further reading waived. Item 4.4. Adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View, authorizing the city manager, or designe, to execute fiscal years, 2026, 27, Funding Agreements, with the Community Services Agency of Mountain View, Los Altos, and Los Altos Hills, for Housing Related Services, in an amount not to exceed $177,000 for a homeless prevention direct financial assistance program, in an amount not to exceed $150,000, to be read entitled only for the reading waived, and adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View, amending resolution 18301, to extend the declaration of a shelter crisis in the city of Mountain View, through June 30, 2035, to be read in title only for their reading waived. Item 4.5. Adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View, approving a request to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, for the allocation of fiscal year, 2026, 27, Transportation Development Act, Article 3, Pedestrian Bicycle Project Funding, to be read in Title Only, further reading waived. Item 4.6. Adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View, authorizing the city manager, or their designee, to amend an agreement with Silicon Valley Clean Energy, to increase funding for the heat pump water heater program by $500,000, resulting in a total not to exceed amount of $1 million, to prevent entitle only for their reading waived. Item 4.7. Adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View, calling a general municipal election, for the purpose of electing three members of the city council, requesting the board of supervisors to authorize the registrar of voters, to contract for election services, authorizing the city kirk to contract with the county of Santa Clara, pertaining to services to be performed by the county in connection with the general municipal election to be held on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026, and related read and title only, further reading waived. And adopt a resolution of the city of Mountain View. City Council of the City of Mountain View, adopting a 200 word. Wait a minute. 200 word maximum. I've got to flip the page here, guys. Oh, sorry. 200 word maximum for a candidate statement of qualifications and charging each candidate for a fixed share of costs for the printing, handling, translating,

[01:10:59] City Clerk Heather Glaser: and mailing for the General Municipal Election, to be head on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026, to be read entitled only for their reading waived. And last but not least, item 4.9, introduce an ordinance of the city council of the city of Mountain View, amending Chapter 2, Article 8 of the Mountain View City Code, to add Section 2.86.25, governing the selection of arguments for city ballot measures, and make other clarifying modifications to be read, and title only, further reading waived, and a set a second reading for June 23rd, 2026.

[01:11:39] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Great job. All right, so we have a motion by council member, Showa Walter, seconded by council member Hicks, city clerk, will you mind taking the roll call vote?

[01:11:50] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Council member Shelter? Yes. Council member Hicks? Yes. Council member Kameh? Yes. Council member McAllister. Yes? Council member Ramirez? Yes. Vice Mayor Clerk? Yes. Mayor Ramos? Yes. Most and carries unanimously. All right. So that concludes a consent calendar. We will now move on to item five, oral communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the council on any matter, not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic within the city's council subject matter jurisdiction for up to 3 minutes during the section. State law prohibits the council from acting on non-agendized 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. And in recent weeks, the city, along with few other neighboring elected decision making bodies, have 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, 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 public comment period. So we will now move on to our public comment. It looks like we have one, two, three, four. 5 people in the queue, so we'll go for 2 minutes. Um, So would any member of the public, uh, 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 blue speaker card to the city clerk. We will take in-person speakers first. Each speaker will have 2 minutes. Our 1st one is going to be Bruce Carney, followed by Kristen Anderson, followed by KBT, followed by Shawnee Kleinhouse.

[01:13:50] Bruce Carney: Good evening, mayor and council members, Ms. Glaser, would you please show the slide for public comment I submitted earlier? Thank you very much. I want to take just one minute of your time to make sure you are aware of the greenhouse gas admission report released earlier this year by Silicon Valley Clean Energy. They prepare reports each year for all of their member agencies. The clerk is showing the latest slide for Mountain View. As you can see, emissions in 2024 were higher than in 2019, the year before the pandemic. In fact, 5% higher. The reason for the increased emissions is that in 2024, Silicon Valley clean energy was unable to meet its goal of providing 100% carbon free electricity. I have been assured that SVCE returned to being carbon free in 2025 and will strive to be carbon free in the future. But what happened in 2024 should serve as a reminder that we can't take it for granted that the electricity we consume will always be as clean as we hope it will be.

[01:14:56] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Mr. Carney, Kristen Anderson, followed by KBT, followed by Shawnee Kleinhouse.

[01:15:03] Kristen Anderson: Good evening. Thanks for hearing me. I just have two things I want to bring to your attention. One of them is the city of Mountain View Dog Park, of Ralph Shoreline, by Shoreline, across from Shoreline Amplitheater, by, you know, by the golf course. There is a dog park, has both for large dogs and separated for small dogs. It is barren. There's, like, one covered bench for someone to sit in, and then another one has, like, a second, or, you know, it'll have some benches, but it's just plain, plain, gravel type of, you know, dirt, nothing for the dogs to do and run around or have fun

[01:15:47] Kristen Anderson: with. And so I would like to see you guys kind of spruce it up. It's been this way for decades, as long as it's been there. So it would be nice to have some fun. added to it. The other one is the issue on for Charleston entrance onto Southbound 101 highway. There is, right there, it's by the Costco. And there's also an exit from Southbound 101, to ringstorf, and they are within 100 feet of each other. There's also, in addition to that, there is the ring store, Entrance 2101, that's right after them. And this cloggs up 101, all the time, all the, you know, all day, there's no give from that. And I'm surprised, honestly, that there's not more accidents right there. It's very hazardous. And, um, I would like to see... When last year, you guys closed that entrance from Charleston, and it just made the flow on southbound 101 so much easier. It's just, it was amazing. So if there's a way that you guys could actually just close that entrance, because there is a ring store of one, and if you do need an additional...

[01:17:09] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you. All right. Next, we have KBT, followed by Shani Kleinhouse, followed by Alvin Kerr.

[01:17:20] KBT: I'm with the coalition of community organizations called SOS, safety over surveillance, and I want to commend the council and the Mountain View Police Chief for taking the groundbreaking step of canceling the flock AI enabled cameras to protect our citizens from outside surveillance by federal agencies like ice, and from violations to our Fourth Amendment rights, protecting us from warrantless searches and invasions of our privacy. This is so incredibly important, also, for our immigrant community as well. While other cities drag their feet, Mountain View leads the way by canceling these cameras. I was overjoyed to see the cameras near my neighborhood removed, and some other ones as I drive around. In the last couple of weeks or so, I had thought from the February 24th meeting that there was going to be an official announcement to the public of when these cameras were going to be removed. Um, so I hope that that can be considered soon, uh, to be announced because I would love to see our city stand firm for the individual civil liberties and a safe surveillance free zone for our city. Additionally, I hope the council continues to reject the use of any AI enabled ARPR cameras from any company in the future, because there is still so much evidence of increased misuse and abuse and lack of data protection. So I hope we can continue to protect our citizens from overreach by the federal government by doing so. Thank you again so much, counsel for canceling the contract.

[01:18:51] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Shani Kleinhouse, followed by Alvin Kerr.

[01:18:59] Shani Kleinhouse: Good evening. Shani Kleinhouse with the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance. I wanted to thank you for adopting the Parks and Recreation strategic plan. The biodiversity anchors in the plan are really great to see, and thank you for that. It's more than just a park feature. It really looks forward to integrating nature into the fabric of the city. So it's really important to know that one, the plan does not require every new plant in every park to be native, not at all. You only have to have one area, or one tree, or in a few trees that provide biodiversity value. And by biodiversity value, I would take the California native society. definition that talks about what is biodiversity, and that's the web of life, that evolved together, native plants that evolved along native insects, birds, and other wildlife, providing food, shelter, and ecological relationship altogether. So we're not talking about a lot of trees from a lot of places. That's not biodiversity that's relevant to this landscape here. So we really need to look at how do we bring a biodiversity anchor that has biodiversity value? So a tree from Nevada, or New York, or Pennsylvania, doesn't have that value here. And we need to remember that. In the definition, and now you look at the next plan, which is going to come next time, and I can't come and speak some here today. And, you know, there is a city in Cinitas that just adopted their native plant ordinance, 100% of all plants planted on city properties have to be native. And in other projects that they permit 50%, Not asking you

[01:20:49] Alvin Kerr: to do that today. But I think keep in mind, there is an importance to bringing back and supporting our local ecosystems and our local native plants. These are butterflies.

[01:21:04] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you. Next up, we have Alvin Curra.

[01:21:12] Alvin Kerr: Mayor Ramas, Vice Mayor Clark, Council members, city staff, Chief Canfield, Alvin Kersilvan Park Neighborhood. Just three quick things. One, uh, thank you, Mayor Ramos, for the state of this city. Um, I just, I don't know if you've been told, but I wanted to mention it's really important that these things be sent on the internet so that those of us who can't be at, at on site for those kinds of things are able to watch. I'm very grateful. City Attorney Logue. Congratulations. I hope that it's something you're looking forward to not just something you feel like you have to do. So, thank you. And, uh, finally, uh, particular manager Chief Canfield. I am an active personer at St. Joseph Parish, and I wanted to thank you all for being supportive of the activities that we do, just like this last weekend, especially if your support is your patience. Um, I'm pretty sure my pastor appreciates it. I can tell you for sure that I do. And I yield back my time. Thank you.

[01:22:07] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you so much. We will now take virtual speakers. We have one virtual speaker, Judy.

[01:22:24] Public Speaker: Okay, can you hear me? We can hear you.

[01:22:27] Public Speaker: All right, is this for, uh, non agenda items?

[01:22:30] Councilmember Emily Ramos: It is banana agenda items.

[01:22:32] Public Speaker: Okay, great. Because, uh, it's within your purview to discuss this. You give these special days for special groups, like the gay group and the black group, so on. You don't have the right to cut me off just 'cause I'm white, and I want something for my group. Um, just recently, the SPLC has, um, been under, uh, a lot of investigation, now, um, indictment or some kind of charges put on them for, um, basically giving Jewish actors the assignment.

[01:22:56] Councilmember Emily Ramos: All right, okay, we're gonna stop that. The council rep welcomes welcoming. Um, respectful, non-threatening public comments on matters within our jurisdictions, comment deemed otherwise, pursuant to the council code of conduct, and the government code may be grounds for terminating a speaker's comment, period. Thank you so much. And we will now move forward to item six, the public hearings. So, item 6.one, city of Mountain View vacancies and recruitment and retention efforts, government code section, 3502.3 Human Resources director Maxine Gilo 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. Did I pronounce your name wrong? I'm so sorry. Maxine Gulo. Gulo. Correct.

[01:23:47] Councilmember Emily Ramos: All right, and we are ready when you are.

[01:24:25] Human Resources Director Maxine Gulo: All right. Good evening, Mayor Ramos and members of the council. I am Maxine Gulo, Human Resources Director, and tonight, I'll be presenting Mountain View's annual workforce transparency report under AB 2561, covering our vacancy data. What we're doing to address it, and how we're investing in our workforce for the long term. AB 2561 took effect January 1st, 2025, requiring public agencies to report vacancy and recruitment data at a public hearing at least once per fiscal year. If any bargaining unit exceeds a 20% vacancy rate, a formal remediation plan is required. Tonight's presentation fulfills that obligation, and I'm very pleased to report that no bargaining unit is in that territory. Yes. AV 2561 took, um, sorry, about that. So let's go into our four recognized labor organizations. We have Eagles, SEIU, the Mountain View Professional Firefighters Local 1965, and the Police Officers Association known as POA, representing nearly 640 positions that deliver essential services to our community every day. Their work is a foundation of everything this council prioritizes. At the time of this report, I'm very happy to say that we have four new hire scheduled to start by the end of the fiscal gear, which improves the vacancy rate to 9.0 per percent. which is below the national public sector benchmark of 10 to 11%. And I want to say that that is not a coincidence. It really reflects the years of deliberate, sustained investment in our recruitment and retention efforts that this city has done. Vacancies by a snapshot, so breaking it down by unit. Public safety is performing really well. Firefighters at 4.4%, and POA at 3.3%. Our Eagles group is at 10.5%, and SEIU is

[01:26:50] Human Resources Director Maxine Gulo: at 14.54%. Both are below the 20% threshold, requiring additional disclosure under the law. But both are numbers we take seriously and are actively working to bring that number down. I'm happy to report that even since this report has been done, we actually have six new start dates for positions in our Eagles bargaining unit. So our numbers continue to change every day. So for our recruitment and retention efforts, our recruitment efforts really begin with the community for all approach, where we recruit individuals who reflect mountain view's diversity and values, prioritizing quality over speed. Also, we are recruiting smarter, we are expanding our USIM NeoGov, which is our online applicant tracking system to reduce time to hire. We offer a great competitive package. We have targeted hiring bonuses for hard to fill roles, and we continue to build from within our organization, through succession planning, internal advancement, pathways, on the retention side. We um, we provide paid parental leave. We offer hybrid work options, and we also provide mental health and wellness resources. And these are just a few of all the wonderful things that the city of Mountain View provides to our employees to contribute to our retention efforts. Also, I want to highlight that we continue to invest in our workforce. Over the last decade, Mountain View has grown by 129 FTEs, and that's a 22% increase. The fiscal year, 2026, 27 recommended budget, which comes on next, proposes 714.75 regular positions. And this is the highest in city history. But I'd like to be clear about how we've gotten here. That every position added has been tied to a specific service need, a funded budget line item or a deliberate council decision. This growth has been fiscally responsible and calibrated to what our budget can sustain, not adding, not simply adding head count. And I believe that this is part of the fiscal prudence of Mountain View is what makes us so fiscally sound as an organization. Through the last several years, the city has converted multiple temporary and limited period positions to permanent. I will even say that in HR last year, we had a limited term administrative assistant funded from limited term to regular, which really helps continue capacity in HR to support services such as recruitments. All these great things, there's also some challenges. We still continue to find challenging in the technical and specialized roles, such as engineering, planning, utilities, and dispatchers. They continue to remain one of the hardest to feel because the credential pipelines are long, and everyone's competing in this market space. Public safety hiring requires multiple step post standards, and that can't be shortcut. We're also planning proactively for some anticipated retirement waves in the next three to five years. And so we continue to build our investment in HR, such as hiring a limited term recruitment analyst that the city council approved in midyear, and she's actually training this on her first week so that she can continue to assist and support us in recruitments. In summary, Mountain View continues to be below the National Vacancy Benchmark. We continue to grow our permanent workforce responsibly and add and convert temporary rules to permanent positions. And so this concludes my presentation, and if you have any questions, please let me know.

[01:31:17] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you. We will now hear from Kevin Ho, analyst 2, and president of our Eagles Union. Welcome.

[01:31:38] Kevin Ho: All right. My name's Kevin, and I work for the city in the public works department. Good evening, council members. First, we'd like to give appreciation to the city for their continued transparency and partnership, as well as their commitment to strengthening recruitment and retention efforts. So, thank you. However, with the passage of California Assembly Bill 339, we are asking the city to prioritize feeling vacant, full-time positions, and to convert more hourly, temporary, and contract roles into permanent union positions. AB 339 has made it clear how many positions remain vacant and how much work relies on temporary and contract staff. work that permanent union represented employees could and should be doing. Our goal, moving forward is simple. Transition these hourly contract and temporary roles. into permanent positions to strengthen our workforce and better serve the people of Mountain View. Doing so has many benefits for the city and its employees by allowing the city to retain institutional knowledge and increase accountability and oversight. It guarantees coverage for crucial 247 operations. It promotes stability, and

[01:33:03] Public Speaker: because permanent roles are stable, they strengthen workforce reliability, and encourages commitment by supporting career growth, and providing access to essential benefits, like cowpers and healthcare. All these reasons, and many more, underscore the importance of making sure union jobs are done by union workers. We support thoughtful, limited use of non-permanent staff when truly needed. However, over reliance on temporary workers, weekends long term workforce capacity, and union representation. Thank you for your time, and we look forward to working together so we can build a more resilient, invested city workforce.

[01:33:44] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you. Um, does any member of the council have any questions? Seeing none. Would any member of the public on the line like to provide comment on this item? If so, please click the raise hand button and zoom or press star 9 on your phone. A timer will be displayed on the screen. Each speaker will have 3 minutes. Do we have any speakers in person? We will now take virtual speakers. Do we have any virtual speakers? See none. Thank you. I will now bring the item back for council deliberation. Any deliberation? It doesn't look like there's any emotion. So with that, go ahead, council member Hicks.

[01:34:35] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Well, I'll just say, although I know this is a pro forma thing that we didn't put it on the agenda ourselves, I find it quite useful, actually, to check in, and I found the written staff report, and then the two, the report from the union, and from you, Maxine. Um, I find it helpful to go over these things every year, um, and think about them and think about staffing. So thank you all for taking the time.

[01:35:07] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Any other comments from counsel? Council member show, Walter?

[01:35:12] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I think it would be interesting to see, um, how the number of staff has varied with the population, because although our staff numbers have gone up, um, over the last 20 years, our population has gone up a lot, too, and so, I mean, it's not, it would just be interesting to see how that changes over time, how that's changed.

[01:35:41] Councilmember Emily Ramos: All right. Well, go ahead, counselor over Hicks.

[01:35:46] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay, and I'll add to that. It would be interesting, taking the point of the gentleman from Eagles, who spoke, that it would be interesting also to see the temporary and part time, whether that has been constant over the past several decades, or whether it has grown. That would be an interesting thing to track, as well.

[01:36:09] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: City Attorney Logue? When you're done delivering, can I just recommend that you make a motion to receive and file the report, just so that we can close out the minutes, and it's clear.

[01:36:20] Councilmember Emily Ramos: All right, it looks like we have a motion by Vice Mayor Clark. Uh, seconded by council member Hicks. Go ahead, Council of Vice Mayor Clark.

[01:36:29] Councilmember Chris Clark: Yeah, the motion is what the city attorney said. Can we get a roll call vote, city clerk?

[01:36:36] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Nice, Mayor Clerk. Yes. Council member Hicks? Yes. Council member K May? Yes. Counselor Emma McAllister. Yes. Council member Ramirez? Yes. I'm from a Mark show Walter. Yes. Mayor Ramos? Yes.

[01:36:48] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Motion carry sceneanimously. All right, and that concludes our public hearing. We will now move on to item 6.2. City manager McCarthy will kick us off and finance and administrative services director, Derek Ramponi, and assistant finance administrative director, Grace Zing, 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. Let's go.

[01:37:12] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: All right. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening. Mayor and council members. I'm very pleased to be here before you tonight to present a structurally balanced budget. And as the mayor said, I'm joined by our finance and administrative services director, Derek Rampone, and assistant director, Grace Seng. And I just wanted to highlight a couple things before we launch into the presentation. And the 1st thing that I want to say is, you all heard during the April budget workshop, how this recommended budget before you this evening is focused on providing core city services, long-term service delivery. There's a real concerted focus on putting funding and recommendations in those council priority areas, the strategic priorities and projects. And then, obviously, one thing that we really pride ourselves on is still uh, trying to be the 1st at many things and innovating doing things differently, um, and really uh, doing these

[01:38:15] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: important projects for our community members. So, that is kind of the baseline for what we present to you this evening. But one thing that I do want to underscore is the fact that our revenues, although stable, they are not growing as fast as what we have seen in the past. And so what that means is that we have a lot of bold initiatives. We have a lot of projects and priorities that council in the community are wanting us to do, and we are seeking to fund, and we just simply do not have all the money that we need to do all of these things. So coupled on top of that is this economic uncertainty that we all know that we're in right now, and we just really can't look that far ahead in our crystal wall right now to know what's going to happen. certainly by the end of this year and into next year. So, as with a lot of cities, we're very focused on our infrastructure, improving our streets, and our roads, and our facilities, but it doesn't stop at that, we have a lot of important priorities related to affordable housing, and sustainability, and new parks, and also making investments in technology within the city organization because there's been a lot of things over the last several years, certainly, since the pandemic and before. where we just need to upgrade our aging systems. And so that's something that we're really focused on as well. So, talking about our revenue is not growing as fast as they should be and needing more money, to do a lot of these really important projects, we are looking at revenue measure in the November 2026 ballot, which the council will discuss at your June 23rd meeting. And really this is to help meet those needs that our community has identified and also think about how we can build the mountain view of tomorrow together. So you will see that phrase in a lot of the infrastructure projects, we have, try to talk about that, not just with community members, but with conversations that we're having individually with people. And then you'll also start seeing those signs around town. So people can actually see the things that we're working on and they know that these dollars are being invested in this important work. So I also want to talk about how this budget making strides towards improving our internal city operations, some of the things that council has highlighted both at the mid-year budget and in the April budget workshop, are things like the organization of our transportation division, hiring, and you all approving a new chief transportation officer position. We have also expanded the weekend hours of our library, and added more staffing and security. We're prioritizing long range planning. We're making investments in our objective design standards, which I know is a very important council priority project. In parallel with updating the standard details for our roads and sidewalks, and really looking at green street infrastructure. So that's something that will really be focused on in the next budget cycle and beyond. And then, uh, one of the other things I'll want to point out what this budget is, we've made a very concerted focus too. place a lot of resources on economic vitality and small business support. So we've implemented a lot of different updates like small business zoning code updates. The business ambassador team, we've created. We've launched the facade improvement program. And so in this budget, we also have recommended the creation of what's called a property-based improvement district or a P bid, which will really help improve the downtown district. Also, more frequent cleaning of the parking garages downtown and also the actual PedMalt, the Castro Street. So those are recommended in the budget as well. along with a brand new storefront activation program along the ped mall. And I also want to say that we're really excited about investing in the summer of soccer. So really supporting those World Cup activities and helping activate our businesses and bring people downtown, both spending money and eating downtown. We've also made an investment in this budget, in our public art and culture. And part of that is hiring or, I guess, you all approving a brand new public art administrator position for the 1st time. And we are in that hiring process right now this month. So that's very exciting. And then

[01:43:24] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: we'll also be celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Center for Performing Arts this year. So we're very excited to recommend funding towards that project. And then lastly, before I turn it over to our finance director, really at the foundation of all that we do, in this budget and in everything we do every day is our focus on being a community for all. We've heard about it tonight, we've talked about it. And it really is our foundational principle in Mountain View and our funding of our programs and initiatives. All the various events is really rooted in this belief that Mountain View is a city that serves a very diverse community and that we are a welcoming, safe, and inclusive place for everyone, not just to live, but to work and visit. So that is also at the foundation of our budget. So with that, alternative over to our finance director, Mr. Rampone, to walk you through some of the details in the budget.

[01:44:30] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: All right. Thank you, city manager McCarthy, good evening, Mayor Ramos, and Vice Mayor Clark, council members, Derek Rampo, and your finance and administrative services director. Joining me this evening is Grace Sang, the assistant finance and administrative services director. The item you have in front of you tonight is the public hearing for the fiscal year 2627 recommended budget. Here is a road map of the budget development process, as you've seen before. As you know, the process really begins in November, with a kickoff memo, distributed departments, departments then prepare and submit their budget requests to the finance department around the December holiday timeframe. In January, the budget team compiles and reviews those requests. And in February, the budget team, and the city manager meet with departments to discuss priorities and proposed funding. Also, in February, we provide the midyear budget update to the city council on April 14th of this year. We provided the preliminary review of the fiscal year 2627 budget. The recommended budget that you have before you this evening was actually published early this year on May 22nd, and then here we are now at the public hearing for this recommended budget, and then the next and final step in this process will occur on June 23rd, when counsel considers adoption of the budget, and including, in that, will be the capital improvement program. As we've discussed previously, the city has a long history of sound fiscal practices. We consistently adopt structurally balanced budgets, aligning ongoing revenues with ongoing expenditures and using one time funds for only one time costs. In recent years, strong revenue growth has generated operating balances that have allowed the city to make additional payments towards our long term liabilities, such as paying down our pension obligations through cowpurs, and fully funding our retiree health benefits. The city also prioritizes maintaining healthy reserves, to prepare for economic uncertainties. These practices have helped support the city's AAA credit rating from Standard and Pores, which is the highest possible rating. And this has helped reduce our borrowing costs, as we saw last month, when we issued our lease revenue bonds. And finally, the city has received national recognition for excellence in budgeting, financial reporting, and procurement. As we look at what's changed since our last touchpoint in April, we still have a lot of economic uncertainty, it remains elevated, which makes revenue forecasting, more challenging. Growth continues, but at a slower pace than previous years, inflation has actually shown some signs recently of re accelerating, which have increased cost pressures for both residents and local governments. Consumer confidence, as softened as households, grapple, and face affordability challenges. The labor market remains resilient, but is showing signs of moderation recently, and interest rates are expected to remain higher for a longer period of time, which may affect development, investment, and economic activity. Overall, staff continues to recommend a prudent and cautious fiscal approach while closely monitoring economic conditions and revenue trends. As we turn to the local economy, the local economy continue to show signs of slowing, though growth does remain positive, revenue growth is expected to be modest in future years, unemployment remains low, but is expected to rise slightly. Sales tax has been impacted by business relocations, enclosures, affordability has spoken about previously remains a challenge for residents and businesses. However, there have been some new employers that continue to locate in Mountain View, which will support the city's long term economic vitality. Overall,

[01:48:34] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: I would say the local economy remains resilient, but growth is really expected to be more moderate going forward. The forecast assumes moderate growth and a stable local economy. property tax is expected to grow at 2.9%, while sales taxes forecast to remain flat. Lease revenues for the city have been projected with a 2% annual increase. Expenditure increases, are expected to grow faster than revenues, which creates an ongoing budget pressure. Key risks for the forecast include inflation, the federal policies, uncertainty, and the potential for an economic slowdown. The forecast that we have prepared does not include or assume a recession. So overall, the budget remains balanced, but there's definitely uncertainty and expenditure growth that continues to require close monitoring. Here's the recommended budget for fiscal year 2627. It's structurally balanced. We have new ongoing staffing requests that are very limited and targeted. The budget focuses on maintaining service levels and advancing council priorities. Investments are also included to improve operations and support a lot of economic vitality. The budget balances, fiscal sustainability with strategic investments in city services and priorities, included in the recommended budget, as the city manager, McCarthy, previously indicated various continuous improvement efforts. These recommendations focus on improving service delivery and operational effectiveness. Key initiatives here include the transportation, division reorganization, expanded library hours, and enhanced long range planning. Investments in public safety, health and wellness, and technology improvements, support employee effectiveness, and community service. Overall, the budget includes these targeted improvements that improve that strength and city operations and service delivery. As we previously spoke about with economic vitality and small business support. This budget includes targeted investments to support small businesses, downtown activity, and economic vitality. Funding supports grants, loans, business promotion, and storefront activation programs, the budget also invests in public art and cultural programming, including a new public art administrator position, and the MVCPA's 35th anniversary celebration. These investments will support a vibrant economy, an active downtown and a strong cultural community. Now we turn to some of the recommended items in the budget for 2627. The recommended budget includes a limited number of targeted staffing changes. These positions focus on legal services, planning, transportation, and public safety operations, one GIS position is being converted from limited period to ongoing, and one warehouse staffing position is being modestly increased to meet operational needs. These position changes are strategic and focused on maintaining service levels and addressing key workload demands. As we look toward building the mountain view of tomorrow, I'd like to take a moment to, again, highlight a new revenue source that's now available to the city. Major G was approved by more than 72% of voters, has now generating dedicated funding for community priorities. In fiscal year, this fiscal year, 2526, Major G is projected to generate over $5 million in revenue. These funds will support the public safety building, parks and open space, affordable housing, and other community investments, Major G provides an important local funding source to help advanced council priorities, and invest in Mountain View's future. So as we continue building the Mountain View of Tomorrow, we're asking the community to help shape our future priorities. A community survey is now live to gather input on potential investments and public infrastructure. public safety parks, affordable housing, among other things. The survey results will help inform council discussions regarding a potential revenue measure, and this survey is a good opportunity for residents to provide direct feedback on the services and investments that matter most to them. Now, we'll get into a little bit of an overview of the numbers in the actual recommended budget. First, we'll turn to budgeted revenues. This is citywide, all funds, just over $520 million. As you can see in the pie chart, the general operating fund, enterprise fund, and the shoreline regional park community fund, make up nearly 80% of the city's budgeted revenues, with special revenue funds, capital project funds, internal service funds, and other general fund related funds comprising the rest of the balance. Switching to citywide expenditures, the fiscal year 26, 27 recommended budget includes nearly 598 million in expenditures across all funds, the general operating fund remains the largest component at 36% of total expenditures, followed by enterprise funds, special revenue funds, and the shoreline regional park community. Together, these four fun categories account for over 80% of citywide expenditures. Expenditures exceed revenues on a citywide basis, because certain activities, such as capital projects and affordable housing,

[01:54:06] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: loans are funded from accumulated fund resources and balances, rather than current year revenues. So you may notice that the total expenditures exceed revenues, but that's why. Now, turning to the general operating fund, which is the city's primary operating fund, and supports Core Services. In fiscal year 26,27, revenues in the general fund, our operating fund are expected to increase by 11.9 million, or approximately 6%, compared to the fiscal year, 25,26 adopted budget. This represents healthy revenue growth, particularly given the economic uncertainty and slower growth environment discussed earlier. And this projected revenue growth will help support cities service commitments and a structurally balanced budget. The slide really highlights some of the major economically sensitive revenue sources and how they compare both to the current year's budget and current year's projections. Property tax remains the city's largest and most stable revenue source. It's expected to increase approximately 3% over current year estimates. Utility users tax, continues to face some pressure, it's projected to be below budget assumptions, which really reflects changing consumer behavior, and utility usage patterns. Business license tax continues to perform well, while sales tax is projected to remain relatively flat, as the local economic growth moderates. It is important to note that comparing current years adopted budget shows a 6% increase, but comparing to what we now expect to actually receive for this year, growth is a more modest 2.6% in the bottom right corner. I wanted to give a little bit of context for how our major revenues are growing. This chart really shows the historical growth rates of the city's major, general operating fund tax revenues. Revenue growth has generally been positive, but has definitely varied based on economic conditions. The current year, 25,26, and fiscal year next fiscal year projections are below historical averages, as you can see on this chart, to 2.8% and 1.5%. This really reflects the more moderate growth assumptions that are included in our forecast. Overall, we continue to project revenue growth, but definitely at a slower pace. than the city has experienced in many prior years. Now, we'll turn to expenditures in the general operating fund. They are expected to grow by 6.4%, or $12.5 million, in fiscal year 26,27, when compared to the 25,26 adopted budget, as you will recall, a few slides ago, revenues are expected to increase by 6.1%, or 11.9 million, so you can see there is a slight gap, where expenditures are definitely growing at a higher rate than revenues. This slide shows the five year forecast for the general operating fund, as you can see, the 26, 27 years, is structurally balanced with a projected operating balance of $150,000. However, looking ahead, you'll see the red numbers. Those are modest deficits beginning in 27, 28, as expenditure growth really starts to outpace revenue growth. The forecast does return to a positive balance in 2030, 31, but that's largely due to projected reductions in pension costs, which are very variable, which are variable, and can really change. So still focusing on the general operating fund, this is the revenue by function or by type, with property taxes being the number one source, the largest source, and use of money and property being the second. Use of money and property is investment earnings and lease revenues that the city receives as a landowner of numerous ground leases, having a higher percentage of revenue come from lease revenue is a rather unique situation, which the city has historically benefited from, especially during economic slowdowns. Most cities usually have sales tax as their number two revenue source, but in Mountain View, it's actually our number four largest revenue in the general operating fund. Turning to expenditures in the general operating fund, approximately $217.7 million, this chart shows how expenditures are distributed across major service areas, police and fire account for 46% of the general fund expenditures. This is typical, for California cities, as public safety services must be staffed and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and are generally funded through broad based city revenues rather than user fees. As detailed in the recommended budget, document, this slide summarizes the ongoing general operating fund recommendations for next fiscal year. The nondiscretionary items. It's about $1.5 million. Those are required cost increases to maintain current operations, such as citywide utility costs, fleet maintenance, investments, and technology, and the janitorial services contract, among other things. There's 3.1 million in discretionary funding that supports the

[01:59:40] Finance and Administrative Services Director Derek Rampone: six ongoing position changes discussed earlier, as well as other high priority programs and services. We also have limited period funding, included in the 2627 recommended budget. These are one time strategic investments. The staff is proposing 7.9 million in limited period funding for fiscal year 26, 27. Those key investments really are staffing, support, um, upcoming election costs, contract services for various programs and grants. Additional funding will support firefighter recruits attending the academy, and also some other limited period support for various departments, including consulting services, to evaluate and improve some of the city's planning, permitting, and land use processes. So at the April Preliminary Review, Council did provide some direction regarding right sizing council member travel and training budgets. It should be noted that council budgets have not been adjusted in 10 years. The recommended budget does include increased travel and training budgets, as you can see, on the first bullet point there. What's not in this recommended budget, but we will be including in the adopted budget is an increase to the per term technology and office equipment allowance, so that will be included. That's per term for four years, so we're gonna recommend increasing that from 3,800 to 5,000 total for the four years. So I'd like to close with just next steps of the budget process, we will return to the city council on June 23rd with any updates or modifications that are discussed tonight. Um, including we will have the capital improvement, program budgets. In addition, we will be seeking approval of utility rates, and other fees, charged to customers, and we'll also have the appropriations limit as a separate item for approval. And with that, we're happy to answer any questions.

[02:01:41] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you. Thank you. Does any member of the council have questions? Let's go. Questions? Questions? No one? Council member Ramirez.

[02:01:56] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of quick ones. First, thank you, staff, for the presentation. Nothing surprising, because we've had many opportunities to provide in, but, um, I have a question for the fire chief. I'm sorry, to burden you, but this, I hope will be easy. I'm curious why the fire protection performance measures use averages rather than median figures.

[02:02:27] Brian Jones: Good evening, Council. Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members. Brian Jones, currently serving as the fire chief for City of Mountain View. Uh, Because our performance measures provided for a four minute travel time, which is the most common measure that we don't meet due to traffic, road closures, um, other variables that are beyond our control, uh, providing an average, gives you a good example of, uh, where we most often meet, which is around, uh, Five minutes and 55 seconds, which is very good for the city. Answering your question on median. We did in response to your question that you asked earlier this week. We are median for EMS incidents in small fires is 4 minutes and 52 seconds. Um, and median, uh, median response times for or median travel times for building fires is 4 minutes and 11 seconds. As far as why we did average over median. It was just a staff decision at the time, but we're more than willing to provide both in the future.

[02:03:45] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Great. Thank you very much. Yeah, very helpful. Um, I think that's good for now. Thank you.

[02:03:52] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Council member Ramirez, Council member Scholwalter.

[02:03:56] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I asked a couple of questions about inspections, because when I hear complaints from residents, it's often about things that are related to an inspection of one sort or another. And so, it was very helpful for the staff to answer questions about specific kinds. But, yeah, why don't you come back up, Brian? Because I was gonna ask about the code, and, for instance, one of the, one of the things I think that people have questions about is, is how, uh, just kind of how a code enforcement, um, uh, how a code enforcement procedure works, you know? How do you hear about it, and when it comes in, where does it usually go, that kind of thing?

[02:04:46] Brian Jones: So to start in the city of Mountain View, we adopt the California fire code, so that's our standard for our fire inspections. We also have a municipal code, uh, item which has several uh, Mountain View specific fire code adoptions that we've made. So our inspectors have several mandated inspections. The majority of those are what we call

[02:05:10] Brian Jones: R2 occupancies, so those are multiple family occupancies, a lot of your apartment buildings, residences that house 4 or more occupancies, 4 plexes as such. So all of those are mandated that we go to each year as well as hospitals, schools, and those types of facilities. And then we have all of our permitted occupancies, occupancies that hold hazardous materials, restaurants, assemblies where large people gather, large amounts of people gather. So all of those require annual inspections. So we have an inspection list and a database. We hit all of those inspections annually, and our inspectors go out. On their first inspection, they will note any violations. The most common ones we come into are housekeeping, so a lot of clutter around, exit's blocked, electrical boxes that are blocked by high piled storage, storage that is piled within 18 inches of a sprinkler head, that would prevent the sprinkler head from dispersing adequately to put out a fire. Those are the most common things we see. Also, exit lighting that is commonly out that we just asked to replace. Our priority is always in fixing an issue in addressing an issue. So we'll write up a notice a violation. We come back out 30 days later, and our focus is really on helping those property owners or business owners address the issues. Our ultimate goal is safety. And through, if they don't address those on the 1st round, we usually go out one more time and really help them understand what the issue is and address the importance of it, why this is such an important issue. Almost every fire code, uh, item that you'll run into is because they're a fire that had multiple fatalities. You look back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, there's a huge fire problem in the United States. We had a lot of large assembly fires that occurred in assembly occupancies, a lot of nightclubs, hotels, multiple family dwellings, apartments, fires. All of those fires that resulted in a lot of fatalities is what led to a lot of these fire code items. So we stress the importance of those. And through that education campaign, a lot of people make those fixes right away. Very rarely. Will somebody refuse to make a make a change? Um, when that happens, uh, then we go to an administrative hearing, and there's sometimes a fine involved, um, with it. But ultimately, our goal is always safety.

[02:07:52] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And basically, this year, there weren't any of those. I understood reading the table properly.

[02:08:00] Brian Jones: Correct. Well, I'd have to go back and review the performance measure, but we hit 100% of all the inspections.

[02:08:06] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Right, you hit 100% all the inspections. Yes. Well, one of the, another reason I'm bringing this up is that I think that, um, you know, it's really important for us all to understand all the many layers of, of, um, government and, um, kind of what we do, and what we do to keep us safe. So, without any complaints that anybody makes, all of these things, get inspected by the city of Mountain View, buy a professional every year. Yep. That's just a very important service that, you know, that we offer. And so, that's why I'm asking these questions to kind of bring it, you know, bring it forward. Because I do think it's a very important service, and people should be aware that, you know, that we are really, you know, actively involved in promoting their safety. And I know that, in previous times, previous chief mentioned, the calls that the fire department gets, and the vast majority of them, of course, are for medical, right? And that, you know, and he attributed that to this very extensive inspection program that we have, that means that the number of fires we have is less than it might otherwise be. Yep. So...

[02:09:25] Brian Jones: Mountain View has always been very proactive in fire prevention since the early '80s. It was one of the first cities to adopt a full city code, fire sprinkler ordinance. And then I would also add, in addition to those mandated inspections, the city and the fire department are very proactive in other events. So, for example, for the Super Bowl event, where we knew different assemblies were gonna have festivals or events. We went out and proactively worked with those business owners, offered an inspection, made sure that those assembly occupancies were safe. We also do that. We're

[02:10:01] Christian Murdoch, Community Development Director: at every shoreline concert, uh, doing protechnic inspections, making sure all of the exits are clear throughout those concerts. So we're very proactive in safety throughout the city, not only on our mandated inspections, but anywhere where we believe there's a safety hazard.

[02:10:16] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Thank you. Okay. And then I have another question about inspections, and that's probably related to public works or planning. And I wanted to hear a little bit about the distinctions between the inspections that public works does, and the planning department does in the construction of a project.

[02:10:49] Christian Murdoch: Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor, council members, Christian Murdoch, Community Development Director. One of the divisions within the community development department is the building division, and there are a number of inspectors we have on staff that go out and primarily focus on the private property components of developments. So things all the way from the underground utilities, excavations, all the way up to the multiple levels of construction above grade. I'll defer to the public works director to describe the scope of her team's inspections, but primarily those involve issues, typically related in the public right of way, utilities, connections, street design, curb, storm water, and so forth.

[02:11:26] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Okay. To make sure that that's all produced, uh, properly and it will, um, function as built as designed.

[02:11:36] Christian Murdoch, Community Development Director: That's correct. So the building inspectors are there, making sure that the field conditions and construction is occurring consistent with the approved plans, which have been reviewed for California building code compliance, similarly the public works inspectors, are making sure the public realm improvements, are meeting city standard details, and other standards for connections to the city infrastructure.

[02:11:57] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Thank you. Okay. I want to talk a little bit about public works inspections. Educate us a little bit about that.

[02:12:14] Jennifer Inng, Public Works Director: Always happy to talk public works. I'm Jennifer Inng. the public works director here at the city of Mountain View. As Christian described, when we do an inspection on a private development project, public works as realm is really related to everything that's in the public right of way. So any sort of frontage improvements, those could include sidewalks, curb and gutter, the street itself, the street trees that are installed, the utilities that are in the street, those all fall under the realm of the public works inspector. Any sort of, I call it mitigation, if we have to do anything to touch a traffic signal, et cetera, that is also in the public right of way and falls under the public works domain. As it relates to private development, CDD is really in the driver's seat, with respect to that, and so the public works inspections fall under the general umbrella of the overall building permit. And so, my team and public works interfaces very closely with the building division and the building division's inspectors, so that at the end of the project, everything is wrapped up nice and tidy, and everybody agrees that the project is ready to be accepted as public improvements for the city that then take on maintenance.

[02:13:32] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And also just that things are built safely, you know?

[02:13:35] Jennifer Inng, Public Works Director: Always. It's always different. to make sure that things are built safely.

[02:13:38] Councilmember Pat Showalter: And I think that's another thing I, you know, I try and stress when I talk to people is that, you know, we can't necessarily control what is built here, because that has a lot to do with what developers want to build. But we can make sure that it's designed well, and we can certainly make sure that it's built safely. And that's really what all these inspections are about. So that's why I wanted to bring this up, because I think this, you know, this production of a safe city infrastructure is just a major function of a government service that we provide. So thank you very much. Those are my questions.

[02:14:21] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Council member Shaw, Walter, Vice Mayor Clarke.

[02:14:26] Councilmember Chris Clark: It's just a clarification question on the the council budget changes for travel training per term.

[02:14:36] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: So I think with travel training, that's annual. So I think, and that's typically for either brand new council members because the fiscal year doesn't match our terms. Typically, your 1st and last year, it's prorated to like 50%. So that would, that will, that will be a natural peroration that occurs in July.

[02:14:58] Councilmember Chris Clark: Yes, that's correct. And then, um, the per term are different because that's for the, the, um, That is an annual.

[02:15:08] Councilmember Chris Clark: So I'm just curious if if you plan to, in what comes back to us in a couple weeks, have a sort of a proration formula there that you'll just take care of or if you need direction from us tonight as to how to, how to think through that.

[02:15:25] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Yeah, our plan was to do a pro ration based on the years left for the 5,000.

[02:15:30] Councilmember Chris Clark: Okay, got it. That's perfect. Thanks.

[02:15:34] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Vice Mayor Clerk, Council member Commé.

[02:15:37] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. And apologies. These questions came to me as we were sitting, as I was sitting here, not ahead of time. So apologies to staff, so one of my questions is about the nursing pot at the library. I know that that came forward because of community feedback. Has staff heard about community feedback? For example, at our community center, or anywhere else, where council might be able to explore that. I don't I'm sorry, I don't know who to direct the question to. Thank you.

[02:16:12] John Marchant: Good evening, John Marchant Community Services Director. Specific requests for that service at the community center. We do not get that on a regular basis. There's interest on the part of council. We can look into it, but that is not a typical request that we receive to date.

[02:16:30] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: I just, I was curious. I think we're getting we have so many programs at the community center, and I know that's how it came about at the library. I'm not sure if staff can look into if they're the cost on it and come back to council when this returns and just would be curious if it, I know that times are a constraint, but if there, that could be possible. Great, thank you. And then my 2nd question, unfortunately, came to mind because of news. So today, the voice said that the vacancy office vacancy rate, I think, more specifically to downtown is over 30%. But when we're talking about our budget, we were talking about how we've reduced our vacancy rate. I'm assuming that's across our whole city, or maybe we can provide some clarity on those numbers, or what we're doing. I'm, uh, you know, not to get into too many comments, but I know we've, as, um, the city manager mentioned, economic vitality has been one of our pillars, and I just wanted to, uh, ask the question so we can provide clarity, if necessary. Thank you.

[02:17:34] Unknown Speaker: Sure. So I think the story in the voice was highlighting the vacancy rate that resulted from a single large vacancy. And that resulted from a broader corporate restructuring and acquisition that occurred. So I'm not taking that as an indication of particularly challenging conditions in our downtown related to office, they can see. There's a broader regional challenge with that, as business continues to change, uh, post COVID and reimagining, um, office work versus remote work and so forth. And so, um, I think it's difficult to sort of draw a trend from that particular, uh, single vacancy. We are continuing to pursue strategies across a range of activities to improve the conditions for office office occupancy in the downtown. But overall, I would say, you know, what our budget is showing is that we've been tackling that and reducing overall office vacancy throughout the city. And I think that distinction is important clarity. But that's how I read.

[02:18:33] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: That's right, and we reported extensively on that in the economic vitality strategy update, and so, um, I feel confident we're trending in the right direction across.

[02:18:40] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Yes. Thank you. Council member, Kameh, I'd like to ask our library director to come up here, just to provide, uh, further context about your question and the library's experience and the cost.

[02:18:58] Tracy Gray: Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor Counsel. Thank you for the question, Tracy Gray Library Director. So the lactation pod at the library was installed in October and in the last update that we got statistics. So for about 6 months of use, 6 months, our usage has been about 140 uses, which is quite a lot compared to several other libraries who do have them in their libraries. So, the cost would, there's some inspection components, and public works, uh, uh, that piece, but probably the cost ranges from $30,000 to $60,000.

[02:19:50] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Okay? Thank you, council member Kameh, council member Hicks.

[02:19:59] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So first, just sort of a big picture question of clarity, one of the things that jumped out to

[02:20:04] Councilmember Alison Hicks: me was that they, and correct me if I'm wrong, is from, because I'm saying this from memory, is that the expenditures were over revenues, but then there's a little asterisk that says, um, that this is because of fund balance equity use. And I was I thought maybe that jumped out at other people, and maybe you could give sort of a little more clarity on what all that means.

[02:20:28] Unknown Speaker: Yeah, thanks for the question. So, over the years, as fund balance, as revenues may have exceeded expenditures in years past, especially for a capital projects fund, or other type of fund, not necessarily the general fund, but the other fund types, enterprise funds, same things, as they build reserves, we will use those in subsequent years. And so our expenditures will look like they're higher, well, they will be higher, because we are using accumulated balances from prior years, basically.

[02:20:58] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah, and I'm asking that, because at quick glance, when you're thumbing through the report, it just looks like we're being really irresponsible. And I guess the other question, and I feel like this is a big picture question, too, and I feel like I should know the answer. But when you talk about the process for developing the budget, you talk about asking the different departments what they need. Do you also ask, kind of, as we're hitting somewhat harder times than we were when I was first on council? Do you ask, what maybe, do you do what we do in our family have asked, like, are there some streaming services we don't need anymore? You know, do you also ask, is there anything that's kind of built up that we don't need? Because it seems like that's a good practice.

[02:21:45] Unknown Speaker: Yes. I think you were... If you were to ask the department heads, they would tell you. Yes. There are certainly a discussion about whether it's requests that come in for maybe minor adjustments or things that may have been going on for a long time, that may not necessarily be needed anymore. And the budget team has discussed the process for next year as well. And depending how revenues come in, we may need to ask that question even further.

[02:22:19] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Exactly. That's where I was going to go, but I won't need to say that in comments now. Thank you.

[02:22:27] Councilmember Emily Ramos: All right, any other questions from counsel? All right. We will now move on to public comment with any member of the public on the line. Like to provide public comment on this item. If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or press star 9 on your phone. A timer will be displayed on the screen. Each speaker will have 3 minutes. We will take in-person public comment first. So, uh, we will start with Bruce Carney, followed by Kristen Anderson.

[02:22:58] Bruce Carney: Hello again, Mayor and Council. Ms. Glaser, would you put up these slides? Thank you so much. This first slide shows how the prices of residential electricity and natural gas have changed over the last 6.5 years. Both have increased by more than 7% per year. But the price of electricity peaked 2 years ago and has since fallen. Over the period shown, gas prices have risen faster than electricity. Next slide, please. This second slide shows how the rising cost of energy is increasing our city's revenue from its 3% tax on electricity and natural gas. Tax receipts in the last three fiscal years were almost 50% higher than in the preceding years. It's my opinion that the rising price of gas and electricity has created a windfall that should be returned to the community from which it came. The windfall should be returned in ways that will help reduce future energy bills. Next slide, please. If windfall is defined as the portion of the energy tax revenue exceeding $5 million per year, you can see how large the windfall has been. The windfall is almost $7 million in just the last three years. Future windfalls will be larger. In fact, they are likely to be far larger, shockingly larger. Next slide, please. About a year ago, the California Public Utilities Commission hired PG&E to produce a 30 year forecast of natural gas and electricity prices. The report included two scenarios. In scenario one, it was assumed that the use of natural gas would decline quickly. This would leave fewer customers to cover the gas system's fixed costs. Thus,

[02:24:51] Bruce Carney: the price of gas would rise rapidly and continuously, until the late 2040s. In scenario two, the assumption was that a slower pace of decarbonization would lead to less cataclysmic increases in gas prices. But even in scenario two, natural gas prices are projected to increase three times faster than electricity prices. Many Mountain View families have seen the writing on the wall and replaced their gas water heaters, furnaces, and other appliances with electric equivalents. But most have not. And those families need your help, especially families who are renters. Final slide, please. My first conclusion is that the last households to decarbonize will be burdened by shockingly high gas bills for years and years. My second conclusion is that it would be prudent for the city to begin earmarking the windfall portion of its energy tax receipts for decarbonization incentives and investments, while letting the rest flow to the general fund. Finally, I would love to see the council add significantly to the coming year's sustainability budget. In the words of Oliver Twist, please, good council folk, I want more. Thank you, Mr. Carney, Kristen Anderson.

[02:26:09] Kristen Anderson: Hello? So, I'm a resident at the Santiago Villa, mobile home park. And we have approximately 358 homes there. And so, with your utility rates increase, proposed, I would like to remind you that mobile home parks are, you know, lower income, and your increase is, or not the increase, but your proposal is $22.55 per month per household. So with that, with 358 units, that's over $8,000 that you're going to be getting a month, over 96,000 for our, uh, per year for our park alone. And this is to pay someone to read the meter, and so, and I guess, to look at the lines once a year. I feel like that needs to be addressed. that that's too much for low income housing, and so if you could just look at that, and adjust that price accordingly, 'cause I know it was raised last year, and then I thought it was reduced. Um, so can you look into that, 'cause that's just... a lot. I know it might not seem like a lot for some people, but just look into that rate increase, okay? For utilities for the low income people. The other guy for the... with the gas. I went all last winter, not using my gas heater and using electric heaters, just because of the price of gas. Thank you.

[02:28:03] Councilmember Emily Ramos: We will now move on to... We will now move on to virtual speakers. Um, we have, um, Judy back, um, I will say before we uh, unmute you that, um, We are a very welcoming community here in Mountain View. We are proud of our diversity. We are a community for all, and we will not accept comments that will deviate from that. So with that, we will go ahead and call upon you. But keep in mind, we will mute you if this gets out of hand.

[02:28:48] Judy: Yes, um, and I am transcribing this, and you will hear from me, and nothing's gotten out of hand. You have not allowed my viewpoint, and I think that's on full display, and you will have to account for that. Um, I'm going to say that as far as it goes with the other people who spoke, I approve the gas as well. Um, and then I would say, um, as a white person, I believe I have the right to express myself, and I think that the, the rates on these, um, on the financing of this money is, uh, you know, by nature, uh, Jewish, um, youth.

[02:29:25] Councilmember Emily Ramos: And we're done here. Um, that ends our virtual public comment. We will now bring it back to council for deliberation. Council member Ramirez.

[02:29:38] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I really appreciate most of the public comments. But I guess I was sort of becoming introspective earlier today, because this will be the final budget I have the opportunity to work on, with council members, command in Hicks, and it's also an interesting day because I've had to contend with the budgets of 2 cities, and you can guess which one was more satisfying to deal with. Um, But, uh, I'm, I was sharing with a city manager earlier. I feel very optimistic about the future of the city. I feel like we're leaving the incoming council with a remarkable set of programs and investments supporting many of the community priorities

[02:30:35] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: that we've heard over the years that we've worked together, an exceptional staff, some really strong bones, right? a wonderful foundation to work from. And many other cities can't say that. And we're also working on some things that may come up in the next council meeting that I think will strengthen the city's position. So I just want to share my gratitude to staff for having worked with me over the years to incorporate many of the priorities. I've been interested in collaboration with my colleagues. I feel really good about the work that we've done. I have just a few quick comments, so I'm going to move to approve the staff recommendations with some very minor tweaks. First, I'm grateful to the staff for the responses provided in advance in the meeting. Um, and in particular, um, FASDIs, I'm guessing it's FASDI's response to question 3 about thinking about, um, a different way of presenting the, you know, other local taxes or major revenues, uh, uh, information and not for this budget, obviously, but in the future. I think, um, Some of this, the way it's been presented made sense when a lot of these types of revenue were comparatively trivial. Right. So the previous version of the business license tax, um, even the UUT, uh, you know, the cannabis tax continues to be minor, right? And then we also have taxes that are not included here for the reasons you've explained, but I think, you know, still merit some level of transparency, right? The construction tax is minor, but I think something that is worth elevating to the community. It exists, it generates revenue. Here's how we use it. Here's the projections over time. But now the real property transfer tax is significant, and even though it's a volatile source of revenue, we are now using it for an ongoing purpose, right, for debt service. And I think that also merits some level of transparency. So I don't want to be prescriptive in how you choose to present that information, but I do think I do think it will be increasingly valuable, particularly for the incoming council. I think one of the things I've really appreciated about our budget presentations as the budget is an educational document, as much as it is a financial planning document. I always learn a lot reading through it, even though it, you know, been monitoring the council for a long time, and now we've had the privilege to serve for nearly 8 years. Every time I read through the budget, I learned something. And probably some of that is because I've forgotten over the year, you know, what I recall reading from, you know, previous budget cycles. So I'm grateful to you for that consideration. I also don't want to provide explicit direction, but I've learned recently about there is value in presenting both in our performance measures, averages as well as median figures. I appreciate the fire chief's responses to the questions earlier. And, you know, I'll leave it up to you if it makes sense to present both. We can learn something from each of those. But I thought it was useful to understand your perspective in choosing the performance measures as you have. Really, the only thing I wanted to suggest or change was based on an experience that I had at the recent Civic Leadership Grad Academy Graduation, I had the opportunity to attend with Mayor Ramos with council member Kame and council member Show Walter. And I think many of us have been going for years and it's always a wonderful experience, hearing the enthusiasm, and I guess the excitement to continue to be engaged from the graduates of both the Spanish and Chinese leadership academies. And as we were speaking with many of the graduates, I think what I took away was, there's a strong desire for more opportunities to engage the city, and in particular, for things like mixers, for graduates from previous academies, or some of the cultural programming that we've been doing a lot of investment in over the past several years that we've been on the council. De Los Muertos, the Lunar New Year Festival, I think those were some of the events that have come up repeatedly as desired, well received enthusiastically by our community. So, again, I don't necessarily want to prescribe exactly how, staff would like to do this, but I think, you know, a very modest increase

[02:35:50] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: to the multi, multicultural engagement program, for something like regular, alumni mixers, or expanding some of the existing events, to provide additional volunteer opportunities or something like that. You know, I'd welcome the input from my colleagues, but I'm thinking based on the analysis that you provided us, and the first two questions, you know, in the realm of $5,000 to $10,000. Um, and I, you know, I don't want to be specific about a figure, because I would be interested in staff's perspective on how best to use that money. Um, but, uh, that's, so I would move the staff recommendation with, um, the addition of some, some amount recommended by staff between maybe $5,000 and $10,000, um, for, uh, additional multicultural engagement, um, program, um, events and activities, uh, and I think I'll leave it at that. Thank you very much.

[02:36:57] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you. Council member Ramirez, council member Showalter.

[02:37:02] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Thank you. Yeah, I think having a little more extra money for that is a great idea. Um, uh, it could conceive, well, staff can put it where they want to. I couldn't imagine it could also be part of community services, you know, ongoing a recreation program. But, uh, I just wanted to, well, thank, thank all the staff, having, you know, served in local government for many years. Not as an employee at Mountain View, but as an employee of a local special agency. I know how much work goes into budgets. And boy, it's not just one or two people. I mean, we see one or two people up here. I know you've devoted hours and hours and hours to this, but you're not the only one. I mean, there have been people throughout. We have over 700 employees, and I would venture to say that probably at least 100 of them, and maybe 150 of them have been actively involved in getting this budget together. So, you know, thank you all for working together to do that. And, um, I also want to talk about how, a little bit about how, you know, budgets are kind of a story. They're a story of how we're gonna spend our money. And they're a story of what we value and what we care about. And I think that one of the, the parts of the story that I think are so important now is that we're really trying to focus on the things that we can control. And, um, uh, we are, um, you know, we're working on affordable housing, things that we, we can help get built. We're working on getting more parks for people, we're working on the inspections, they keep people safe. You know, those are, we're concentrating on what are the things we can control, because we know that some of the insistence from other, from the federal system. It's just not what it was before. And so we have to stand by ourselves. And we have to collaborate internally to do that. And I see that the staff is doing that. And I really appreciate it, and I hope you're having fun doing it, and you're learning more about what each other's jobs are, and that can be, you know, really a great growth professional growth experience as well. And it also saves money, because if, you know, you find out by working together that, um, you can have one process that can meet a certain subject, instead of having 10 of them, well, you've saved a lot of money. And that's a good thing. So, um, then I also wanted to talk a little bit about revenue, and how, how we are really working to get, um, some increases in our revenue. Like, um, we, we fixed the minimum purchase agreement issue, um, with our water bill that has amounted to, um, upwards of $3 million a year. I mean... We have a, that's not a lot in terms of our budget, but it all adds up. So I think, and that goes into our water fund, which we will need money in forever to maintain our infrastructure. We have measure G, which is bringing up new money. We've had the business licenses. We did a new funding study to evaluate. a fee study. We did a new fee study to evaluate what was appropriate in terms of charging people, fees, for services that we provide, particularly with respect to development. And some of those fees went up a lot, which

[02:40:45] Councilmember Pat Showalter: was appropriate, because they hadn't been changed. I mean, some of them hadn't been touched in 20 years or so, you know, there's been a lot of inflation over that time. And then we are also working to bring new businesses to our community. One, that we're all looking forward to, for many reasons, will be the new Toyota dealership, which will open into stores in a few years, and I think that's that will help our sales tax revenue go up. So, um, all of these things, I, you know, do add together, and, um, I would also say that considering the, um, the windfall nature of the, uh, of the, um, UTT is, is really an interesting idea, because it, in a sense, it's sort of an internal collaboration between our desire to meet our climate goals, i.e. reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the, the less the less gases used, nothing gas is used, the less greenhouse gas emissions we produce, the closer we are to meeting our standards. And at the same time, while we, while gas gets more expensive, you know, we can utilize that money to help people do things that reduce their greenhouse gases locally, like in a heat pump, or buy an electric car, or other things that might help. Plant lots of trees. I mean, there are many things we've heard that would be valuable. So I just, I thought that was a really good suggestion. And, um, but mostly, I just want to say thank you, and I appreciate the time and effort that's gone into this, and I also appreciate how you keep reorganizing this, and it keeps getting better. And having been reading these for 10 years now. I couldn't agree more with my colleague, council member Ramirez. Every time I read the budget, I learn just a lot, like, I don't know, 20 or 30 new facts about the city that I either had not known before or I had forgotten. So, it's really good to have these all put together, and I particularly love these little vignettes. on every department, and what they're supposed to do, and how many people they have, and, you know, what the org chart, all of that information brought together. It really does provide a great story of, you know, what's the organization of the city? So anyway, thank you for all that work. And yes, I'm very happy to be seconding this motion.

[02:43:34] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Council member, Showalter, Council member Hicks.

[02:43:38] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yes, I'd like to express my thanks as well. I actually wasn't gonna speak. I was just going to support the motion, because for members of the public who don't come to every council meeting. We actually go over the budget multiple times, and we kind of hopefully make all our big changes. I'm not gonna propose a big change now. All our big changes earlier. And also, I made my main comment, which was, because we're not as flush as we have been in past years, that we're gonna have to, it's a good time to take a look and see if there are any things that have kind of grown unnecessary. But I made that comment already during questions. So I wasn't going to say anything additionally, and then Council member Ramirez talked about more money for cultural events, and I have to say, and I agree, I will support that. And I've been to the Lunar New Year, and the Dia de los Muertos, and enjoyed them a lot. Um, and, uh, I just, I agree with you that, that staff can figure out how to use more money and make them better, but I do want to encourage good music. Because I have to say, the music has been uneven from year to year, there have been times when there have been really great bands. And that's, to me, that's what gets me out. So, um, and a lot of other people, so I want to encourage that that be taken under consideration. And then, lastly, I agree with what council members show Walter said about the UUT that it might be good to put it towards electrification and, you know, reducing people's carbon footprint in the future. That's it.

[02:45:32] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Council member Hicks, Council member Kameh.

[02:45:38] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thanks, Mayor. Okay, um... So I just want to, uh, thank staff. I, um, I look forward to reading the budget now. Um, and I, I think when

[02:45:54] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: we talk about building the Mountain View of tomorrow, uh, council is able to, um, beefo, we're thinking, and to be creative, and to do all these things because of staff, um, because you are working with us, not only is staff doing that, our community, I feel like the way that we've been able to engage with our community, has been much more robust, each year, we improve, whether it's the budget in brief, or it's the video, or other ways to de mystify, honestly, local government, and what we are spending city funds on. I think that helps us tell the story of Mountain View. And so budgets are, you know, testament of our values and our greatest value is how we're a community for all. And everything in our budget helps showcase that. And it makes me feel very proud to be able to vote and support this budget, and hopefully, colleagues feel this way, and our community feels that as well. I think it's also, um, so timely that we're talking about recruitment and retention efforts, and our budget, same night back to back, because I also feel like we've made a lot of progress, um, as a city, and as a council, and just to kind of give a couple, like, vignettes of how I've seen that, when council member, Hicks, and Ramirez and I started, our, um, budget for multiculture engagement, I think, was like .5 FTE, and now it is this robust program. We've been able to support expansion and create our manager in Chinese civic leadership program. And that's just one example of what we've done. And as I reflect back on nearly eight years. There's so many instances where we're able to say that, and those wins are all because of staff. So I just think it's really important for us to highlight. One other thing, and it'll be a seed I plant, because I know better than to try to sneak something into the budget last minute, is, uh... The mayor's like, oh, you need a match. Um, no, I think that one of the things I've seen our city do, and this ties into the recruitment or attention, is how we have become an all inclusive family friendly city. And we have done that in how we've approached paid leave, our commitment towards childcare, how we're including it in one of our all affordable housing projects. It heartens me that we have seen such high usage of our nursing pot in our library just over a short amount of time of six months. Um, I feel a bit surprised that, um, because our aquatic center and community center are right there, and I see so many families utilizing it, that it hasn't come forward. But I also remember, when I was, you know, a new mother, how overwhelming and kind of shy you can become for making those kind of requests, um, and your... And so I would just ask counsel to, you know, if maybe not this budget, but in future looking budgets, how we might be able to do that, Rangstorf Park is so heavily utilized, I'm sure, you know, thousands of people use it every day, especially we have Magical Bridge, um, providing that opportunity, um, would, I think, would be really great. So I just want to plant that seed. Thank you, Mirror.

[02:49:38] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Council member Kame. I don't see anyone else in the queue. So I will use this time to thank staff for their amazing work in the budget. Thank you to my colleagues for putting in all the things that you want to put in our budget. One thing I would also like to point out with our multicultural engagement program. I see throughout the state, in our local, um, region, how uh, all these councils want to talk about, like, we care about community engagement. And I'm sure there are several candidates for council here. I'm just gonna be just like Councilman Ramirez. Um, who, who, who will say how much we care about community engagement. But this budget is one of those things where you show where we invest in that community engagement and has really paid dividends, not just with the multicultural engagement program, with our neighborhood, council neighborhoods committee grants. There are a lot of things that our city does that, that really not only says that we care about our community and having them having a

[02:50:38] Councilmember Emily Ramos: voice, we invest in it, and we invest in the megaphone that they have for us. So thank you to staff. Thank you to my colleagues. We are ready for a vote. Uh, city clerk. Feel free to do the roll call vote.

[02:50:59] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Council member Ramirez? Yes. Council member Showalter? Yes. Council member Hicks? Yes. Council member, come May? Yes. Counselormer McAllister. Yes. Vice Mayor Clark? Yes. Ramos? Yes.

[02:51:11] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, city clerk. We will now go into item seven, new business. City attorney, Jennifer Logue, and assistant city attorney, Francesca Serrano 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. It will take a few minutes to shift around. Thank you to all our department heads to make sure that they got funded.. Just in case.

[02:52:26] Francesca Serrano: Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, counsel. Francesca Serrano, assistant city attorney, here with city attorney log to present the 2026 proposed ballot measure for the charter modernization. Want to start with a little bit of background, how we got here, what the initial directive was for this first ballot initiative regarding the charter modernization. Charter Modernization was included in 2025 to 2027 work plan item. The plan is to have two separate ballot items, the first of which would be the 2026 proposed ballot measure. This proposed ballot measure, would include non substantive and non controversial updates. The purpose of this first balance measure is to modernize and clarify the city charter. And it is very limited in scope to typographical errors, clarifying existing language, revising archaic terminology, improving internal consistency, and getting us aligned with charter and state law and current operational practices. There was a February study session with the council in this issue, and, uh, City Attorney Logue did comprehensive benchmarking with several other cities, looking at their charters, and the 9 cities are listed on the slide, and after the study session, council gave majority support... to, correct type of graphical errors, to replace gender specific terminology with gender neutral terminology, to clarify, a reference to qualified elector to align with state law, to amend the deadline to fill a city council vacancy from 30 to 60 days, to remove the requirement that ordinances and resolutions be read, or have their titles read, prior to adoption, to require a roll call vote on the adoption of ordinances and resolutions only when requested by a council member, or required by law. to remove some outdated references, to maintaining books and update that language, and make changes to charter section 900 to address requirements for boards and commissions. And then, finally, to clarify the requirement that stagger terms, uh, of stagger terms for boards commissions and committees. So, we, uh, will go through the changes, that we are proposing for the charter myself, and city attorney lobe, and we will not be going through them in chronological order. Instead, we'll start with the simplest changes and then go to the more complex changes. So the first change is Section 504 in regards to vacancies, and currently the 30 day charter deadline to Felicity Council vacancy creates a very constrained timeline, particularly when vacancies arrive unexpectedly. And so this gives us a little bit more time when there are vacancies, particularly unexpected vacancies to fill them. Again, at the study session, a majority of council indicated support for amending the charter in Section 504 to extend this deadline. Section 602, powers and duties. This is one of the replacements to gender specific language into a gender neutral alternative, and making these changes helps to modernize the charter, improves clarity, and inclusivity, and ensures that the document reflects contemporary drafting standards. And again, at the study session, this was another change that the majority of councils supported. Section 711, powers and duties of the city attorney. This is another section we're in, and if you'll note, it's just in subsection H, that we change his or her to there. So again, that gender neutral language. Section 1107, Contracts for Public Works, this was a very minimal change, and this was just an error changing noting to nothing, if you'll see at the very last paragraph of Section A. Very straightforward. Section 501 eligibility. So, this, the term qualified elector that was referred to in this section did not actually exist in the California elections code. So in order to

[02:57:24] Francesca Serrano: make very clear that we were referencing the California elections code and the term that they use as a Elector. We wanted to clarify. And so this language clarifies, and where you see that there's additional changes, that's just to clean up and streamline language, nothing substantive. Section 514, adoption of ordinances and resolutions. Again, this was to streamline council meetings and align with current practice. The substantive portion of the changes here remove the requirement that the title of the ordinances and resolutions be read in full. And again, the additional changes are just to clean up some of the language and streamline. And I will say that at the study session, this was enthusiastically... indicated as something that council supports. Section 515, Eyes and Nose, this streamlines the council meetings, and aligns with current city practice. It revises the current roll calling voting requirement, so that a roll call vote is required only if requested by a council member or required by law. Again, this was a change that the majority of council indicated support for at the February study session. Section 709, powers and duties of city clerk. This refers to what I referenced previously some outdated language. There was many references to keeping books, which is not something we do any longer. And so this modernizes the charter while preserving the substance of the city clerk's duties and responsibilities. And it's rewritten to make the language clearer and more concise. And these changes were also supported by the majority of council during the February study session. Section 1603, the construction of the charter. So, in addition to fixing the specific instances of gender specific language, we also included this amendment to this section to address kind of a catchall, so that going forward, we can indicate that we are our intention to use gender neutral language. Section 1702, definitions, this was a section that, at the study session, council directed staff to confer with the Rental Housing Committee, to determine whether it supported amending this chapter. I'll refresh counsel's recollection. The reason for amending this was that it was actually an incorrect citation to the code section. However, because of where it falls in the charter and kind of how it can be controversial. Council did want to get that input from the rental housing committee. We did get that input, and they are in support of this amendment.

[03:00:42] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: And I will hand it over to City Attorney Lo. Good evening, Mayor Vice Mayor and Council members, Jennifer Logue. I'm going to take you through the section 900 changes. Um, if you recall section 900, um, at the study session, you were given 3 options for section 900. This is a section that had the residency and qualified elector requirements for members of boards, commissions, and committees. And the 3 options was, one, to maintain the status quo and require the residency and qualified elector, um, for all boards, commissions and committees. Option 2 was a partial delegation, where charter created bodies had to have the qualified elector and residency requirements while council created bodies did not. And then the third option was full delegation to city council so that you could decide for everybody, whether or not they needed to be a resident or qualified elector. The majority of council supported Option 2, which is partial delegation, that preserves the residency and elector requirements for boards and commissions created by the charter, unless the charter itself otherwise provides, and while granting city council authority to establish membership and qualification for bodies created legislatively, and then you also supported making corresponding, clarifying, and conforming amendments to other sections within 9, I will now take you through each section. So Section 900 begins Article 9. This is the one in where we are now implementing option two. You can see clearly that at the top, in addition to the boards and commissions that are established by that article, that council is now authorized to create, by ordinance or resolution, additional boards, commissions, and committees, as you deem necessary, and then any ordinance or resolution creating such body shall, shall prescribe its functions, duties, powers, jurisdiction, membership qualifications, any other, and any other terms or conditions council deems appropriate. So now you are fully delegated the authority to establish those other bodies. Um, the rest of the, this section maintains requirements that were already in it. It's just cleaning it up. It maintains the requirement that members of

[03:03:15] Francesca Serrano, City Attorney: board commissions and committees shall not hold paid offices or paid employment with the city, um, during their term of employment, and it also maintains the requirement that, um, every member of a board commission or committee established by this article only. shall be a qualified elector of the city. And the reason why I put the word established by this article is to ensure that we are not impacting the requirements that are already set forth in the CSFRA with regard to their membership requirements. So this qualified elector requirement is only going to apply to the boards and commissions and committee established by Article 9, which currently stand as the EPC, or Environmental Planning Commission, the Parks and Recreation, Committee, and the Library, or the Trustees. Those are the only three that are in Article 9, and those are the only three that will be affected by this qualified elector and residency requirement. The CSFRA stands on its own terms. Okay? Section 902. In this section, I have just added the word before it only referred to boards and commissions. I've clarified that it applies to boards, commissions, and committees. I cleaned up the first sentence just to clarify that it's the affirmative vote of at least four council members. And then, with regard to terms, I said, unless otherwise providing in this charter, members of boards, commissions, and committees shall serve for terms, that literally is only if every document relating to these boards, commissions, and committees is silent. There is at least a term somewhere. But you, in the next sentence, you see that you have the power to establish the terms unless the terms are created in the charter, that is, once again, to preserve what is in the CSFRA. They do establish terms for their members. And so I didn't want to take away what was already existing in the CSFRA, but you otherwise have the authority to establish terms, as you deem appropriate. And then it also clarifies the staggered term assignment. There was a requirement that, um, staggered terms begin on January one. I clarified the language to establish the terms in accordance with the bodies establish appointment cycle, because some of the bodies have different appointment cycles. So this just provided a little bit more flexibility. Such a 904, um, uh, and the title you see that I made it gender neutral to presiding officer as opposed to chairman. Again, I cleaned up some of the language adding boards, commissions, and committees. Um, and then I don't think there were any other changes in here other than just to clarify the language. Oh, in the 3rd paragraph. We clarified some language. It was very difficult to determine the vote requirement when there are vacancies on the body. So we made it very clear that it's excluding vacant positions, provided that the members, then in office, is not less than a quorum, so as long as the body has a quorum, they can move forward, and now we know what their vote requirement is. And so there was a lot of confusion over that. So we've clarified that language. And then you see the rest is just adding the term committee to the rest of the section. Section 905, the major change that I made here is to clarify that a vacancy is not created simply because someone is no longer a qualified elector or a resident unless that is a requirement of their membership. So before a vacancy was automatically created when that happened, but now it aligns with the option to that you chose. And so now it does not automatically create a vacancy. The other things that create a vacancy were existing, already existed in this section, and all I've did is, I've cleaned it up a bit, but it's the exact same requirements. Okay? So this is the language that will show up for voters of the proposed ballot measure, and it includes a summary of all of the changes that we just went through. And so this is our recommendation to the council. In addition, we want to note that the resolution in Section 13 allows for council to select and authorize up to three members of the body to file a written argument in favor of the proposed measure. So any motion on this matter should include adoption of not just the resolution, but also identify the members you select to file arguments in favor. And

[03:08:39] Francesca Serrano: so with that, we're happy to answer

[03:08:41] Councilmember Emily Ramos: any questions. Thank you. Does any member of the council have questions? Vice Mayor Clark.

[03:08:57] Councilmember Chris Clark: Right, it took me a minute. Um... Two hopefully simple questions. Section 902, the appointments and terms. Um... The affirmative vote of at least four council members, uh, what if we only have a quorum of five and three, can it just be a simple majority, instead of requiring 4 people to be affirmative in the affirmative?

[03:09:28] Francesca Serrano, City Attorney: If you... It's slide 16 at the top, but that helps.

[03:09:31] Francesca Serrano: Yeah, um, if you if you want to change that, you can. That was just the requirement that already existed in the charter, and so I did not change it. Affirmative votes was it was always had to be four. I just cleaned up the language. So if you want to change that, that's fine. I think it would be a rare occurrence.

[03:09:49] Councilmember Chris Clark: I'm just thinking if we only have 5 members, for whatever reason, the simple majority is three. then you have to basically have a super majority to do something. But, um, okay. But it sounds like it was that way before. There were at least 4 affirmative votes. And then for a slight 18, section 905, the... There's no world where, um, I think this is another case where it's not necessarily any more restrictive than it was before, but if a vacancy occurs, you know, 2 months before the person's term would have expired, there's no requirement that we appoint someone. on short notice for that 2 month period, we could, do we still have the authority to just leave it vacant and fill the next sour full term?

[03:10:48] Francesca Serrano: You do? I don't think there's anything in your charter that requires you to fill a vacancy in any certain period of time.

[03:10:55] Councilmember Chris Clark: Because I think I saw elsewhere in the charter. It says until their successors are qualified and or I guess maybe that's mostly elected officials, but...

[03:11:03] Francesca Serrano: And that successors qualify. That was the term. That was in the four-year term, but that language has actually been scratched and I just clarified the line. I didn't say until the successor is qualified. I just, it was, it didn't really have a purpose. It was it's in the term section. Let's see, section...

[03:11:26] Councilmember Chris Clark: I believe you don't spend a whole bunch of time. Okay. How did that read before?

[03:11:40] Francesca Serrano: So it used to say, It it said serve a four-year term until their respective successors are appointed and qualified. So it just says, so it was a little bit weird. Um, they just serve a four year term, but then if they leave early, there's just a vacancy, and it gets filled whenever you fill it. So I just clarified their language, that it's a four year term. But clearly, vacancies can be created by retirement or, you know, resignations or other reasons. But then your charter has never had any deadline for you to fill those vacancies. Got it. Okay. Okay. Council member Show, Walter?

[03:12:30] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I have a question about section 900. Um, that's basically talked about on slide 14 and 15. And the idea is of option two is that the city council gets to set the qualifications for new committees, right?

[03:12:52] Francesca Serrano: For, yes, for any legislatively created committees, so all the committees other than those that are created by the charter, correct?

[03:13:00] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yes, okay. So, um, maybe it might be a little clearer if, um, on, uh, slide 15. in the second paragraph. We inserted established by this article, after no members of any boards, commissions, or committees established by this article, shall hold any paid office or paid employment, because that is a qualification, and we would like to give that authority to future councils to make that.

[03:13:38] Francesca Serrano: Okay, if you give me a moment, I actually prepared a backup slide, so I can show, if that is, if this is what you're... Yes. Is that what you're?

[03:14:02] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Mm hmm. I think that would be clearer. And I can imagine that there might be, for instance, if we wanted to have a committee sometime related to, the way the sevens was working, the people who live there are, we would want some of them to be city employees, because that's who lives there. So I can imagine where that's the only one I came up with, but I can imagine where that would occur. So I'd just like to leave it

[03:14:40] Councilmember Emily Ramos: open. That's it. Thank you.

[03:14:45] Francesca Serrano: So I think that's fine. I think we would just want us, the motion maker, if that is supported by a majority of council, can just, if it's supported, would need to make that motion for us to amend this.

[03:15:04] Councilmember Emily Ramos: All right, so since we're still in questions, does anyone else have any questions? All right, moving on from questions, we will now go to public comment. Would any member of the public joining us virtually, or in person, like to provide comment on any item on the provide comment on this item. If so, please click the raise hand button and zoom or submit a blue speaker card to the city clerk. We will take in-person speakers first. Each speaker will have 3 minutes. Do we have any speakers? No speakers. We will now take virtual speakers. Seeing none. We will bring it back to council. So, um, I will now bring the item back for council questions and deliberation. Please note that a motion to approve the recommendation should also include reading the title, the resolution attached to the report. The city clerk will take a roll call vote as we have a council member participating remotely this evening. Next, uh, looks like we have a motion by council member Ramirez. Bring it home.

[03:16:05] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. Let's go home early tonight. Um, I will know. We probably would have gone home 5 minutes earlier if Pat didn't have to read all of that stuff into the record during the consent calendar. I moved to approve, thank you very much for your work on the charter modernization. I know it's been something that we've talked about for quite some time, and it takes time and effort to just make time to figure out how we should modernize the provisions of the charter. And I'm grateful to the city attorney's office, which I'm sure worked in collaboration with the city manager's office and city clerk's office too. come up with these recommendations. So I'll move to approve the staff recommendations, including adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Mountain View. One, calling a general municipal election, and ordering consolidation with the statewide general election, for the purpose of submitting to the voters, a ballot measure to amend the city charter, to modernize and clarify its provisions, to authorizing members of the council to author an argument for the ballot measure, and three, directing the city attorney to prepare an impartial analysis, and for authorizing the city clerk to contract with the county of Santa Clara for services, to be performed in connection with the general municipal election, to be held on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, to be read entitled only further reading wave, just to clarify, do we have to, as part of the motion to determine which council members are, um, okay, so we might need to think about that. Um, I'm, uh, okay, including council member show Walter's recommendation, uh, or suggestion, noting that the council will retain the authority to determine the membership, uh, requirements by resolution and ordinance for legislatively created, uh, bodies. I'm happy to suggest, and we can sort of figure this out later, but as a starting point, that the mayor, if you're comfortable, the vice mayor, and yes, well, just this is for the arguments. And I'm happy to volunteer as that 3rd person, be the members of the council who are authorized to author an argument. If someone else would like to work with us or, you know, replace one of us, I'm totally comfortable with that too. Thank you.

[03:18:32] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, council member Ramirez. It looks so he made the motion, and seconded by council member Kameh. We also have, uh, Chris, uh, Vice Mayor Clark on the in the queue.

[03:18:44] Councilmember Chris Clark: I just have 2 more questions, sorry. One is, what is the practical impact of council member show Walters edition? So it's, um, So it has to do with commissions or committees, share the members of such. shall not hold any paid office or paid employment with the city during the time of their appointment. I just, I'm trying to figure out what the practical impact of it is, because it does have one.

[03:19:20] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Yes. So, the charter is currently written right now. prohibits, um, any member of a border commission from holding a paid office or paid employment. So it's any border commission. Um, with, and so I

[03:19:36] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: kept the original language. With this modification made by council member, or proposed by council member, Showalter, you are now only saying that members of boards and commissions and committees established by article 9, which is only the environmental planning commission, the library, board of trustees, and the parks and recs, body, um, cannot hold paid offices or uh, paid employment with the city. Every other legislatively created body by you, you can allow employees, paid employees or paid officers to be on those bodies, or you can prohibit it in your ordinances and resolutions establishing those bodies, to the extent that you are going to allow, um, paid officers or employees to be on those. There's obviously going to need to be some conflict of interests, um, assessments done because there are FPPC requirements and regulations governing and compatible offices and things like that. So that is something that would need to be assessed as you are establishing those bodies. If you carve this out for yourself when you're creating new bodies legislatively.

[03:20:51] Councilmember Chris Clark: So with the proposed change, the article 9 bodies still have that prohibition. Correct. And then we can decide for everything else whether to allow it on a commissioned by commission basis or overall, which I think we've done previously, or we've at least had that debate at some point. But basically we have flexibility, but we're not modifying the chapter 9 or whatever, Article 9 or whatever it is.

[03:21:24] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: That's correct. Bodies. Okay. And then just back to 905. Um, or, um, or whatever it was, maybe it was 902, I think.

[03:21:39] Councilmember Chris Clark: I guess the, the only reason I, I recoil a bit from 4 votes is, in my mind, there's kind of three, there's 3 things. There's like 6 votes required, I don't, and I can't remember in the charter if it's 6 votes or if it's a percentage threshold, but there's like urgency ordinances that require typically 6 votes. There's appropriations that typically require 5 votes, which I think is just a two-thirds. It doesn't specify five. And then most everything else that we can do is just simple majority. And we have convicts of interest in those present in voting and I'm just trying to avoid creating arbitrary numeric thresholds. Any more of those than are necessary, even if they already existed. as opposed to just sticking with simple majority. But maybe that's not the right thing to do. don't know. Our urgency ordinances and appropriations, a fraction or a percentage, or I can look it up.

[03:22:37] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: I don't recall, I would have to pull up, let me pull up the charter. I don't know if urgency ordinances had a different vote requirement. They have the ability to be adopted without a 2nd reading, but it's possible that the vote requirement is the same. Let me see.

[03:23:01] Councilmember Chris Clark: Might be called emergency ordinance. Let's see. Okay.

[03:23:20] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Okay. So I see adoption of ordinances. I see a few different four fifths. in here. I just see, no ordinance or resolution shall be passed or become effective without receiving the affirmative votes of at least four members of council.

[03:24:03] Councilmember Chris Clark: Okay. So you even have... all over the place, then.

[03:24:06] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Yeah, it is. Yeah, just ignore me then.

[03:24:09] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Right. Okay. Thank you, Vice Mayor Clark. Council member McAllister.

[03:24:20] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, could I get clarity on what, uh, council member show Walter is asking? Because, um, I, one years ago, on my 1st term of council, this came up before, and we discussed it, that no employee could be no city employee, could be on a commission board, because of conflict of interest, and it was already talked about, and we kept that in, The uh, the law of the bylaws. So, I just get some clarity on which he's asking again, please.

[03:24:54] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Certainly. Currently, the charter prohibits, um, paid employees and paid officers from being on any board commissioner committee. With this change proposed by council member, show Walter, that prohibition would apply to only the, um, boards and commissions created by Article 9, which are currently the environmental planning commission, the Library Board of Trustees, and the Parks and Recreation Commission. So that prohibition would apply to those three only. Every other board commission and committee that would be created by council by legislative action. So you'd either be creating it by ordinance or resolution, the council would itself have the authority to decide whether or not to prohibit paid officers and employees from being members

[03:25:49] Councilmember Alison Hicks: of those bodies. So what it does is, it gives counsel the right to decide for those legislatively created bodies, but for those that are created by the charter, the prohibition remains in place.

[03:26:07] Councilmember John McAlister: Thank you. So, um, I can't support that part of the motion, so if you want to bifurcate it. Um, I still see a conflict of interest, and it could be minor, it could be big, but there could be uh, consequences to other members of, that he works in a department, that he wants something done, and it would be uh, opening up a can of worms, so. Those are my thoughts.

[03:26:35] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Is that all your comments? Is it? All right, council member Hicks.

[03:26:45] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that the purpose of council members show Walter's modification was, in case there were cases, and you brought up the sevens, which is a portion of it is affordable housing for city employees, if you wanted to make a board, you would have to have city employees on it, because that's what that housing is for. But do we not have other options for that? Could we, if we were going to make some sort of board for the sevens, couldn't it not be a Brown Act body? Could it be some other sort of body? So maybe the modification that council member show Walter is talking about is not as important as it would seem. And I'm thinking I may agree with council member McAllister that it's just easier to make sure, because council changes. You know, although this current council has talked conflicts of interests, and we might, anybody we create, we might make sure that there are no, they're appropriate guardrails for that. Future councils may not have had that conversation. And you might want it built into the law. So I'm thinking maybe we, I'm thinking what council member, McAllister, has said that maybe we should go back to, um, the way it was originally written. Um, but there are other ways to address what council members show Walter was worried about, which is, you know, what if there's some exceptional committee that we want employees to be on. So any comments on that welcome?

[03:28:31] Councilmember Emily Ramos: So, do you have an answer to that?

[03:28:33] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: Yeah, thank God. I can respond. Yes, you can create bodies administratively. So if they're not legislatively created bodies, for instance, you have the deferred compensation committee, that is all city employees with some investment advisors, that is an administratively created body, that is staffed by members of the union, by employees, because it's governing investment of our funds, right, our retirement funds. And so that is a body that has employees on it, and was created administratively. So you could have bodies created administratively, which essentially would happen through the city manager's office, and you can create these bodies, and employees can be on them. You just run into the problem if it is a legislatively created body or directed a body directed by council.

[03:29:27] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I'll say, that's my preferred route. And, um, and I think there's, I think, administrative bodies are great. Everybody doesn't have to be a brown act. They might be appropriate for other things, and I think we've used them for other things. Anyway, that's my comment.

[03:29:46] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Council member Hicks, Vice Mayor Clerk.

[03:29:50] Councilmember Chris Clark: So, I think I agree with you, in principle, Council member Hicks, Council member McAllister. The reason that I'm okay with council member show Walters change is that my goal here is to have the charter be... The charter should cover, it should be our Constitution. It should cover the most basic fundamental things, and everything else should be left to the council because the charter is very difficult to change, and all sorts of other things like FPPC regulations and what constitutes... Does someone getting to $250 from the city? Are they treated the same as someone who's a full-time employee? I think that should be reserved for us in our judgment. And so, I think what we could do is address the concerns around, um, you know, a paid employee being on a body, that can be a resolution that we pass or rules that we have in place, that we could put in place now, and future councils would be, you know, unless they make changes to it, would have that as the default. I think putting, I think, having

[03:31:07] Councilmember Chris Clark: any sort of prohibition without any thresholds or anything like that on every single body that we create at the charter level, I think the charter is the wrong level to set that at. I think we need to be able to. Respect to the principle that I think everyone is, or especially Council member McAllister and Hicks have articulated, but not tie our hands to the extent where we actually have to go to the voters and ask permission to make a change for something like, um, for a committee that we might want to create at some point in the future that may very well need to have an employee or 2 from the city on there.

[03:31:50] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, Vice Mayor Clark, council member Ramirez.

[03:31:54] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the vice mayor's comments, and I was going to say essentially the same thing, but sometimes it's helpful to think in terms of example. And the example I had been noodling over is, do we want to prevent, you know, a high school student who happens to be a compensated lifeguard, right, paid by the city? Do we want to prevent that high school student from serving on the youth advisory committee? Like, is that really what we care about? You have to pick. You could only, you have to either be on the youth advisory committee or be a lifeguard. And I think that's the kind of example where it gets into exactly what the vice mayor is suggesting, that by resolution or ordinance, as we establish these committees, we, at that level, decide, it's not appropriate for, you know, a city employee to also serve on this body. And I would imagine that's probably the case for most of the bodies that we create. But there are some, and I think the youth advisory committee is a good example, where the conflict of interest is essentially nonexistent, you know, and all we've done with this charter language has prevented that high school student who happens to be a lifeguard from serving on our youth advisory committee. You know, I reflect sometimes on the vote we took a few years ago, where it was a 43 vote, we decided to retain the senior advisory committee. Uh, I, uh, supported dissolving it because I felt that it was appropriate to have that as a non brown act body. That staff can assemble seniors at our community to solicit input, and, you know, I think they would have the flexibility to meet as they wanted whenever they wanted, but a majority of the council disagreed with me and felt that it was appropriate for that to be a brown act body. And, you know, I think that's something to consider here. right? Like, how much do we want to shackle our round act bodies. So, you know, council member Hicks and council member McAllister, I understand your philosophy, and I would support, by resolution or ordinance, generally not permitting city employees to serve on most of the legislative established bodies, but there might be some instances where it is appropriate. And I think that, as the vice mayor suggested, that flexibility might be valuable for the council to benefit from.

[03:34:28] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, council member Ramirez, Council member McAllister.

[03:34:33] Councilmember John McAlister: So, um, um, Everybody's bringing up, uh, scenarios, and so, right now, we have an appointment committee of 3 people. And so would they be, even though it's supposed to be ratified by the city council? Or does it have to be ratified by the city council, of everybody that, with those 3 members appointing someone to a body? And saying, is there a situation where the 3 could do it without the whole consent of the council?

[03:35:07] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: No, it requires 4 votes. Okay. If I could just jump in real quick, John. It would also require that the establishing resolutions provide that that can happen and currently you don't have that in any of your resolution.

[03:35:25] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, what can happen with? Okay, again, what can happen without a resolution?

[03:35:32] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: So right now, none of your resolutions allow for paid city employees to serve on any of your committees?

[03:35:39] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, that, yeah, okay. So that goes back to when we've had the discussion years ago. It was, yes, there's exceptions to all these things, but I remember the discussions that we had on back then as well, should we or shouldn't we? And the path sounds like we're going down, again,

[03:35:57] Councilmember Emily Ramos: that there could be potential conflicts. Uh, council member of Ramirez's, uh, scenario is also rare, but, you know, we do have other things, so, um, I appreciate everybody's input, but I still feel that the clear cut case is usually a little easier to work with. So

[03:36:17] Councilmember John McAlister: thank you. Thank you, Council member McAllister, Council member Hicks.

[03:36:26] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So there are things I feel strongly about and won't vote for, but this is not one of them, so. I will be supporting it, no matter which way it goes. But, um, but, uh, that said, isn't the youth advisor, is the youth advisory commission currently, uh, a Browneck Group or not?

[03:36:46] Councilmember Emily Ramos: It currently is, but we have talked about making it not a brown act body. For exactly the reason we're talking about the whole lifeguard thing. That, and also because they, like, they've wanted to have meetings outside of the city boundaries, and are prohibited from doing that right now.

[03:37:02] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah. Okay. Okay, so. Thank you for the clarification.

[03:37:07] Councilmember Emily Ramos: All right, anyone else in the queue? Council member McAllister, you still have your hand up?

[03:37:14] Councilmember John McAlister: Oh, KL, okay, we bifurcate that just to, uh, or do you want to? I would like to support the whole motion, but except for the, uh, except.

[03:37:26] Councilmember Emily Ramos: I'm not sure there's a technically feasible way to do that. Because we're placing the charter, uh, uh, we're replacing placing all of this on the ballot. So the attorney, any thoughts?

[03:37:55] City Attorney Jennifer Logue: I think one thing to consider council members to just state in the public record your general support and then with the specific objection. And then I think that's very clear for everyone, how you feel about the balance of the amendments. I think that is probably the...

[03:38:17] Councilmember John McAlister: No, I was going to say, in respect to council member, or mayors, for as persistent and encouraging to get this thing clean your duck, I will go along with his suggestion.

[03:38:30] Councilmember Emily Ramos: All right. Seeing the cue empty. Let's do a roll call vote.

[03:38:35] City Clerk Heather Glaser: Council member Ramirez? Yes. Council member Kamei? Yes. Council member Hicks? Yes. Council member McAllister.

[03:38:43] Councilmember John McAlister: Yes, and my gratitude to council member Ramirez for staying on top of this. Council member show, Walter? Yes. Mike Mayor Clark. Yes. Mayor Ramos?

[03:38:53] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Yes. and carries you unanimously. Thank you so much. And now we are on item eight. Council staff and committee reports. Do we have any council staff and committee reports from any of my colleagues? Anyone? Council member Committee.

[03:39:10] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great. Sorry, Mayor. I think since the last time we met, we had the Lot 12 ribbon cutting, now known as Corso.

[03:39:19] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Yeah, we were all there.

[03:39:20] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Well, item 8, so I'm just reporting, right? Um, But I can, I don't know if I'm allowed to do it for all of us. I don't know. Is that in the charter amendment, Lucas? Um, and then, um, I attended the Chinese um, leadership academy graduation.

[03:39:39] Councilmember John McAlister: Thank you, Council member McAllister. A couple of transportation deals. VTA is actually gonna start working on the Wisman station. It's taken a while after the CPU seek, approved it. Now they're going to give us a guideline to take care of some of the whistles and bells, so hopefully we'll take those people. I also attended the VTA meeting, board meeting, where they discussed some money from Mountain View, and they also were talking about express lanes. Um, and SR 85, I know Chris is eager to jump on the 85 quarter committee again, but they're thinking of trying to modify what was done about 6 years ago. So, well, we have to keep tuning on what they're planning to do with that. Thank you, Council member McAllister, Vice Mayor Clark.

[03:40:38] Councilmember Chris Clark: I just wanted to note that I, um, filled in for you, Mayor. Well, you were at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and I just wanted, so I just wanted to, we cut the ribbon at Lungo Thai, which is at the Grant Road Shopping Center, and it was a great opportunity for me to scrape off some of the rust, and I was so rusty that I wanted to apologize to my colleagues, that I Cardinal rule number one when you're doing a ribbon cutting, is to introduce your colleagues, and I was a rusty, that I failed to do that, and our chamber CEO had to do that right after. me. So I'm sorry for my colleagues that I'm so rusty that I didn't do.

[03:41:18] Councilmember Pat Showalter: I didn't follow rule number one, but I have learned from that and I will try not to be so rusty in the future.

[03:41:25] Councilmember Emily Ramos: This is why it's vice mayor, and then we build up again. Council member show Walter.

[03:41:31] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Well, I attended an afternoon workshop at BCDC on sediment. We've heard me talk about sediment a lot, and this was pretty exciting because we are printing forth policies about changes in the use of dredge material, and this is just an important step in it becoming California law. And the reason that's important is because, for sea level rise protection, there's sort of three basic things we got to do. We have to change our policies, to allow the things that we need to build, to protect us, like the restoration upon AW. We need to change those policies. We're working on that. And we need to have the building products to do it. And one of the major building projects, the building blocks, is just dirt. And where do we get that dirt? Well, we get a lot of it from dredging, and we get a lot of it from construction sites, that instead of sending it to a landfill and paying for a tipping fee, they can take it to a construction site, which we did, for Panday A2W, and we're doing it now. And then the third thing, of course, is we have to figure out how to pay for it. That's a whole nother story. But then I wanted to end, on a happy note, exciting, fun note is, I had the pleasure of being at the, um, the 1st concert on the green. I mean, a concert on the plaza that we do every Friday night during the, sort of, the long hours of the, of the year. And so there will be music and dancing every Friday night from 6 to 730.

[03:43:11] Councilmember Emily Ramos: Thank you, council member, show, Walter. I will, I've also went to the Lot 12 Affordable Housing Groundbreaking, and the Chinese language, the Leadership Academy, on May 30th. I presented the Oddfellows Lodge. Their anniversary celebration with a little commendation. They are celebrating, I believe, 150 years. You have the Springer Tree's neighborhood association ice cream social that was on the 31st. And then the Monte Loma Association Annual meeting on January 3rd. And then I also went to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, this past week, and it was incredible experience. I'm really so privileged to be a mayor. It's crazy. Like, every once in a while, I'm there and surrounded by all these mayors and being like, am I really here? But thank you so much. There were really great panels, a lot of meeting other mayors, all different kinds of mayors. And it was really quite an experience. So with that, we are on item nine, the adjournment, the next city council meeting will be held on June 23rd, 2026, this meeting is adjourned at 9:45.

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