Public Safety Commission - Regular Meeting

For the minutes, the meeting was called to order at 06:00.

Yeah. I guess we can conduct the roll call.

Commissioner Beggar? Yes. Commissioner Klein is absent. Commissioner Safaharam? Yes. And vice chair Rahram?

Yes.

For the record, commissioner Klein is absent.

Right. So the first item is the approval

of the minutes.

Are there any questions?

Oh, yeah. I have a few quite a few questions, actually.

Right.

It's more for the staff

than and for anybody else. So first of all, this meeting is recorded, isn't it? Yes. On Zoom? Yes. And then published to this the Citi meetings? Yeah. The Citi meetings website.

Do we use AI Companion to note the meeting minutes?

We use AI Companion for the transcript.

Okay. And does anyone verify the transcript after?

We have multiple people in the city clerk's office to verify.

So I guess my questions there's a lot of things that I thought were a little off this time. So one of the first actions I thought we had taken was that in the interest of time from both the sheriff's office and as the fire department, I had requested that they get first on the or at least towards the top of the agenda before we put anything else. And you were going to I don't know which who was going to take that action item between you two. We're gonna verify with the clerk's office if that can be done, something like that. I had written down in her notes that we were gonna try.

Yes. So the advice from the city clerk was that keep the agenda as is, and I was reminded that the commission decides how long they have on each agenda item.

Okay. So so every time we're gonna make that move motion to have them speak first and then go through because I mean, the point of having a commission is to address the issues that come up. We don't want to shorten the time that we have to discuss the issues, but we don't also want to keep these people up to line up. You know, it's not fair then. So that was the that was the context under which I had brought up that, and I'm surprised it wasn't it wasn't first captured in the meeting minutes.

But I'm glad you have an answer to that. Secondly, I believe let's just at least we've written down my notes here. You know, in the in the meeting minutes, like when we talk about Santa Clara County Fire Department, one of and this is this is seems to be standard through all of the things. So maybe this is procedure. I don't know, but I would like to understand.

It says commissioners asked questions. Santa Clara County Fire Department liaison responded to. Yes. Need statement. But for some people who's reading the draft minutes, it it's like gives no information.

Yes. So the city uses action minutes instead of summary minutes because we have the recording of the meeting.

So would it be would it wouldn't it be useful to actually have a link or a path to the video so people can actually see? Because anybody reading this, it makes no sense. We ask questions, somebody

answer. The video is published under Laserfiche along with the agenda and presentations. Sorry? Laserfiche, a link to the video is provided.

Okay. It is provided where the okay. So can you take an action maybe to put it in the meeting minutes for this this meeting so that we can actually I I was looking for for the video today. I couldn't find it. So it would be helpful if and I'm sure other people are also looking for it, they can't find it either. It'd be nice to have that link.

Okay. I'll ask the clerk if Right.

And that's the same feedback I have for 345. You know, there's questions were asked, and then you say couple times in this 345. You say the following people spoke, Sam Rao. Okay. What did he say?

And he had a lot to say. Even if it can capture it, you know, it's not summary minutes, I get that. But we'd actually taken some action items from what Sam had told us to do. So it'll be useful. And then when it came to the public the commissioner report, it's interesting that it was you know, what I was trying to state there was that the Purdue Library Foundation had this issue I mean, had this thing called the event called the Firewise for Pertina.

And my whole point of bringing that up was not to just say that I missed the meeting, which, of course, I did, although I arranged for the meeting. The point of that was to have people actually look at the Cupertino Library Foundation website and look at that Firewise Cupertino because that was a very useful meeting. Tells them where the fire maps are. Tells them what to do under the circumstances, fire preparedness. That was the point of the meeting. What was captured here was, yeah, the meeting was great, and that I missed the meeting. And so it's missed the point of what I was trying to bring up. So that to me, going forward, should be feedback that we capture the correct part of the meeting minutes.

Are you requesting that we amend the meeting the meeting minutes?

I certainly think they should be amended, especially given the last one, which that is why I asked the questions upfront. Do we use AI Companion, and does anybody read the detail after? Because the last one, it says, commissioner Safaram discussed sending emails to library commission about electricity awareness and potentially attending one of their meetings. What he was talking about was alert FCC, and that's what we would really like to have Oh. Capture. This and it's a simple mistake. However, it makes absolutely no sense. This is why I asked the questions upfront as to what was the point. I mean, is it AI? Is it somebody reviewing this stuff?

So I moved that we make the changes as requested to the meeting minutes before they accept before we accept it, if somebody wants to second that.

Second that. We can

take a vote on it. Sorry. I was stepping on your toes here. But

No. I don't I don't.

So It's okay.

Okay. We wanna take a vote?

Commissioner Beggart? I I recommend that we change the meeting minutes before we can accept them. Commissioner

Sappaharam?

I second that. I support that.

Vice Chair Rahman? Yes. And the motion carries unanimously. Okay. And with those amendments, do you accept the meeting minutes?

I guess we have to see the minutes. Right? We can we can accept the meeting minutes the next time around. We're gonna go

back to the next meeting.

Cool. Are there any postponed?

Yes. So there there was an issue with the agenda. Do have an error? We won't be able to do the election of the chair and vice chair because the subject does not match the recommended action. So the two options are that we can either hold the election at the May meeting, or you can call a special meeting. And we have eight potential dates that I can read out.

Okay. What so it would all be, like, in, like, this month or next month or something like that?

Or The

dates are mostly in April and some in May, and the next meeting will be May 14.

Okay. Yeah. I guess we can do a special or, yeah, I would recommend do one of those special meeting dates.

Okay. And I will include those meeting dates in an email to you, and we will see if we can get a quorum for one of them.

Sounds good. I have a question for that. So the topic will be only the direction when we meet for the special

meeting? Yes.

Okay. So

Shall we add anything else to the agenda?

The special meeting will be just the election. You can request that other things be added to future agendas for future meetings, but my understanding is that special meetings are one topic meetings.

Alright. So I guess, like, motion to do the is the chair and vice chair election in a special meeting. Yep.

Second that?

Commissioner Beggar? Yes. Commissioner Sappaharam?

Yes.

Vice chair Raharam?

Yes.

Motion carries unanimously.

Alright. So oral communications. Do we have any requests to speak?

We have one speaker for oral communications, Roger Costet. One moment while I bring the timer up on my screen. Okay. Go ahead.

Yes. My name

is Roger Costa. I'm a longtime resident in Cupertino. And I would request that this commission make a request of the Cupertino City Council

to ensure

and make a request to the county board of supervisors regarding their three to two decision prohibiting the sheriff's department from using automatic license plate breathing cameras because of the flock manufacturer's past history of working with other police agencies. I think the city has engaged in that contract with flock for those ALPRs, and it's a very valid use. It enhances the safety of our community. And this particular week, I pray that we don't have an experience like New York City did where terrorists tried to do a bombing. But in that instance, the ability to access licensed flight readers across multiple jurisdictions brought about a good resolution to that that incident.

So I request that you request the council to request the supervisors reconsider their three to two decision. They were already divided. One person could flip the switch, and it's an important matter for the well-being and safety of citizens of Crews, Chinon, and Sergio. You.

Thank you.

We have no remaining speakers. That's sure.

Right. And, yeah, there's no old business either. Yeah. So, yeah, moving on to the first item of new business, presentation from USCLRP?

Yes. That's the West Santa Clara Landscape Resilience Project. I believe yeah. Here.

Right. Good good evening. I'm Steven Harrington with the Santa Clara County Fire Safe Council. Do we have is the slide show being operated by you guys or us?

Would it be easier for you to do it yourself? I can pull it up.

I can share it. Let me just pull it up. I have it. Just a second, Steven. Alright.

Can you all see the title slide?

There we go.

Yep. There it is.

Alright.

Alright. Okay. Great. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity to present tonight. My name is Steven Harrington. I am a senior project manager with the Santa Clara County Fire Safe Council, and I will turn it to my my colleague here. She can introduce herself.

Hi, everybody. I'm Grace Manel. I work for Ascent. We're an environmental consulting firm that's supporting the Fire Safe Council and the rest of Steven's team in preparing the West Santa Clara landscape resilience project.

So, yeah,

back to you, Steven.

Great. So quick agenda for our presentation. I wanted to present a a history of the Los Gatos Creek Water shed collaboration, which is where this this new project is has kind of come out of. So I'll go over that, and then we'll have an overview of the CalVTP, California vegetation manage or treatment program, and the, West Santa Clara Landscape Resilience Project, also known as WSCLR. Treatment types and activities, example, before and after photos of, vegetation treatments, and then questions and answers.

Hope to to answer any questions you all have. So just to give a a a geographical overview of the areas where we've been working with our with our forest health grants. We've received two grants over the last five or so years, primarily as as the title would suggest, the Los Catos Creek Watershed, but also along Skyline Boulevard further north in the Saratoga Creek Watershed, then reaching all the way to Loma Prieta Peak and Mount Aminam. Cover an area probably of around 55,000 acres. On the map, you see the bright green areas.

Those are areas where vegetation treatments have been completed, and then the orange areas are the areas that are on the the docket for our second forest health grant. Let's see if you wanna go to the next slide. The the this this collaboration is really in response to the CCU Lightning Complex and the other catastrophic fires we experienced in in 2020 and and previously. The the collaboration is made up of Mid Peninsula Regional Open Space District, Santa Clara County Parks, San Jose Water Company, and a couple other smaller landowners throughout the watershed. These are, as you know, huge landowners, and the Fire State Council manages these grants on behalf of the collaborative, administrates these grants.

Our first winner is received in 2021. Then, again, we were awarded one in 2023 from CAL FIRE through the California Climate Initiative funding. And it's really to establish a more healthy fire adapted ecosystem and to really protect and conserve our natural resources, particularly water supply is a is a major concern in these mountains. We have had a total of 14 and a half million dollars in funding and over 2,000,000 in other match funding from our partners. And we hope to treat probably close to 2,000 acres across the watershed.

And we plan to be complete with the or with our second grant in 2027. This collaboration has really become a model for scaling up vegetation treatments. The in California, in general, we've we've been recognized. The collaboration has also been very innovative. We've helped MidPen do things like improve Santa Cruz kangaroo rat habitat.

We've done projects now. We're looking at this West Side West Santa Clara landscape resilience project that will provide CEQUA coverage. We've done work in technology as well, making our our projects more efficient and and really created a a strong foundation for future work in these areas and others. And we hope to include prescribed fire in the future as well. With that, I'll I'll pass it off to to Grace to to talk more about the the CalVTPN and Wisklurp.

Thanks, Steven. It's really great background. So, yeah, I'm gonna get into some details here on CalVTP and Whistlerp itself. So the CalVTP, the California Vegetation Treatment Program, is a tool to streamline California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA review of wildfire resilience projects. The CalVTP is used by many agencies throughout the state to increase the pace and scale of wildfire prevention treatments while maintaining environmental protection for sensitive resources.

In order to qualify for the benefits of the CalVTP program EIR, each project prepares a project specific analysis, or we call it a PSA for short, to demonstrate that the proposed activities are within the scope of the CalVTP. So that's what we show here on the slide. On the left, we have the CalVTP itself, the cover of the CalVTP, and on the right is the cover of the West Santa Clara landscape resiliency project PSA. So the PSA includes an analysis of how the requirements and mitigation measures from the CalVTP would be applied in the project area. Alright.

Here's a little overview of the WhistleClip project. We call it WhistleClip for short, but it's the West Santa Clara project. So, yeah, it's a 143,000 plus acres. It's a pretty large project as you can see. It's that's called the Western Santa Clara project for a good reason.

It's important to note that this entire project area will not all be treated at the same time. It's not all approved for work at once. These treatments will, be phased over a long period of time based on funding, community outreach opportunities, and partner collaboration opportunities. Each treatment unit would undergo a series of requirements, including biological and cultural resource surveys prior to treatment. So this area, this region in general is a high priority because of the hazardous wildland conditions.

Western Santa Clara County is at the intersection between urban areas where where fire ignition is most common and the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Southwest, which contain thousands of acres of forested wild areas that pose a high fire risk due to the volume of flammable vegetation. So Cupertino itself, is on the northeastern edge of the project, so let's zoom in, take a closer look. Here's zoomed into, the city of Cupertino overlaid on the Whistlekirk area, and the shaded areas, with the different colors indicating landowners are the areas covered in the Whistlekirk PSA. So the project will allow landowners in these shaded areas to opt in to the CEQUA coverage provided by the CalVTP if they desire. It's completely optional.

It would not restrict work that landowners wanna do on their properties that have that either are related or have nothing to do with, wildfire, the existence of the CEQUA coverage in a given area, using the WhistleClip PSA does not supersede any existing permits or agreements already in place. Alright. So let's talk about, what treatment activities and treatment types actually are included. So the CalVTP includes three primary treatment types. Here's an overview map of the entire Whistle area, and you can see we have all three types represented.

Let's zoom into Cupertino and go through them. So our three treatment types are, first, in orange, we have the wildland urban interface fuel reduction treatments or WUI treatments. We these are areas in WUI designated areas designated by Cal Fire. They consist of treatments to reduce fuel loads and slow or prevent the spread of fire between wildlands and structures or vice versa. Then we have in yellow, the fuel breaks.

These are strategically placed vegetation treatments around roads, trails, and ridgelines. These support fire control activities, like firefighting during an incident or escape routes, ingress, egress. And then finally, in blue, we have ecological restoration treatment areas. These generally are located in the more wildland areas outside of the WUI. Treatments in the blue areas would focus on reversing ecosystem changes caused by a history of fire exclusion or, restoring post fire damage.

These are the five treatment activities that are covered in the CalVTP that are proposed in the Whistlekirp area. We have prescribed burning, including pile burning pictured here, and it could also include cultural burning and broadcast burning. We have manual vegetation treatment, which includes things like using a chainsaw or hand tools to remove vegetation. Mechanical vegetation treatment includes mowing, chipping, and types of big, heavy equipment. Prescribed herbivory is a great tool for some areas.

That's when you see a bunch of goats on a hillside helping with fuel reduction. And then we also have targeted ground application of herbicides, which is mainly for control of invasive species that contribute to the risk of wildfire. Alright. And I'm gonna pass it back to Steven to go over some before and after photos.

Yeah. So the these photos are of areas that we've taken with our areas we just recently treated in Mid Pen and Santa Clara County Parks. And you can see what we're what we're going after here is not a what, you know, some people might think of as a as a big fuel break where you've cut a big scar through, you know, a ridge line or something like that. These are more about taking out dead, dying wood, diseased trees, taking out small diameter trees so that the result is a forest that has fewer but larger trees promoting oftentimes our native species and really reduces the chance of a of a crown fire, reduces ladder fuels, that type of thing. And these are the typically, the machines that we use, masticators, small tractors with masticator heads that grind material up into into kinda medium sized chips.

Take a look at the next one for a few more photos.

You

can see, especially that that middle that middle shot before and after, you can really see through the forest, which is which is great. And and we're also trying to mimic a condition that that would that would result if you had a regular regime of of fires. This also sets up, the landscape well for the possibility of prescribed fire. Also makes it a lot easier to come back later and do maintenance work. And all of our partners, have been already have already gone back and started treating, treating some areas that we treated a few years ago. So I'll leave it at that.

That's what we have for you. Any questions?

I always have questions, but if somebody else who wants to

go Okay. So

can we go to that map on Cupertino?

Sure. This one?

Yeah. So can we can I zoom into the West Side? Because most of Cupertino seems to be you know, it's it's not in that red fire zone, so to speak. I mean, most of that is on the West Side. So can we just kinda zoom into that side? And just I have

have a map that I can zoom into this right now. This was unfortunately, this is the extent that I have access to.

Let me go zoom into the slide. I mean, if you no. That's okay.

I'm not sure. Oh, I guess I could. Yeah. I think there that is the option, like, right in here maybe.

That's good. Yeah.

So my question here is that the blue areas are the ecological areas, so somebody is doing something about it. Now the brown area that we have, which is a significant part that touches all of the, I would say, the homes or the areas that the people are are closely living. What is the plan for that area to be focused upon for this cleanup? Or is it not gone down to that much detail in the project?

Yeah. At this point, we do not have in this area anyway, there are I haven't seen any plans for specific treatments. And, really, that one way of looking at this project is is to think about a you know, we're we're presenting and mapping areas that could be treated depending, you know, on on this vegetation type. And and these are now areas that will have CEQA coverage if, say, the city of Cupertino got a grant from Cal Fire to do vegetation reduction, that would be fantastic, but you would need to have a secret coverage to do that. This this project, this whistle clerk project, would provide that that layer of of a secret coverage so that you would not have to go out and do a separate environmental assessment to to complete a a a publicly funded project.

That would be one example. Any landowner, any individual landowner who says who perhaps has an acre or two there, who's not receiving any kind of special funding could always do their own work there. But if there was a another, say, collaborative project that that like, the type we've we've worked on that I described before that needed CEQUA coverage, this this PSA, this project specific analysis, would provide that that layer.

So if I understand it correctly, so if there was so let's just take that area between the Stevens Creek Canyon and the Redknock Cree.

Mhmm.

So if that yeah. Just that area. If if it's a private land owner, it's up to them to figure out whether they wanna do anything with it or leave it as is. Now, there are parts of it that comes right down. If you look, it comes down to whatever that major street is, which is Steven's Creek. Go up, actually, not come down. I'm thinking in terms of coming down the hill, but it's actually going up in this map. Just as you see. That part is right in in the city.

Yep. That's Blackberry Farm and McCollum Ranch.

Right. So is that the responsibility of the city, of course? Yes. That's all. And have what are the do they have any plans?

Not any that I can point at definitively right now. I don't wanna

Right. No. I understand. Yeah. My question then becomes so this is just at this point, if I understand this currently, you've identified the potential areas that could be a fire hazard. Is that right, Steven?

Yep. That that is correct. Yeah.

And it's up to whoever owns that land or is responsible for that land to take the action to do something about it.

That is also correct. Yes. And and if that agency or individual organization wanted to do something about it and they needed to have sequel coverage to do my proposed project, this this would provide that that secret that secret coverage to do that.

Mhmm. So I don't I don't understand what sequel coverage means. Would you take a moment to

Sure. I'll I'll I'll let Grace handle that. She's the CEQUA expert.

Yeah. The CEQUA is the California Environmental Quality Act, and that is the oh, sorry. What was that?

So my question is, what does it mean to say you have sequel coverage?

Yeah. The so the the PSA that we're preparing, the Whistle Quirk PSA, it is essentially a a small, offshoot of the California vegetation treatment program, EIR. And so this effectively acts as an environmental impact report for treatment in this area. So that means if these landowners want to do this work, they can just work with the Fire Safe Council to, be a responsible agency listed under the PSA, and then they can conduct this work following the requirements outlined in the WhistleClare PSA, and they would be compliant with CEQA. They wouldn't need to go do a CEQA exemption or fill out their own EIR.

They they would have to do the SQL review because that's already been completed.

Okay. Then I have couple more questions following up if you have the moment. Sure. The photos that were shown over there of the befores and afters

Oh, yeah. Sure.

Let's go back to them. Like like this.

Yeah. What area was this with respect to CooperT?

So this would be I I I don't know exactly, but it's one of these areas I'm pretty sure is Bear Creek Redwoods Park in in Mid Peninsula Regional Open Space District property.

Oh, I'm trying

to get back to

Oh, yeah. Oh, to the to the overview map.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. So so if we look here, Grace, you've got the cursor, but but, right, kind of over see where the Chemeketa Park label is on the map? Bear Creek Redwoods is is right above. Is that it's that bright green area there. Okay. Okay. And then and then some of the other areas that we have photos of are the areas on the the more southern portion of the map in in more of these redwood forest mixed conifer forest.

Okay.

Yeah. And just to kind of compare that to the proposed project.

Oh, yeah.

Yes.

So so you can see yeah. There's Cupertino, and then, yeah, our our treatment areas are mostly, you know, directly South Of Cupertino, just directly South Of Los Gatos in the mountains surrounding Los Gatos and and and along Skyline up towards Sanborn Park and even Long Ridge, which is, I think, also Mid Penn and Santa Clara County Parks. But these these treatments are, you know, more landscape level, you know, where we're treating areas that are that that would really provide a a fuel break if there was a fire moving, you know, through the watershed. It would give firefighters an opportunity to to slow or or maybe stop the fire. So that that that's how they're designed.

That's all I have. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Alright. Yeah. No no questions from my end. Any public comment?

We have no speakers, vice chair.

Would you

like to request to

speak? Would

you like to speak on the

side? Yes. I heard was

Oh, sorry. One moment while I bring up Sorry. I'm having an issue with the timer.

I'll be less in three minutes.

Okay. Let me just

Okay. Go ahead.

What I heard was this project basically removes some of the barriers that would be in place due to permitting on the. The question that I have is where does the money come from for work? And has this in any way freed up capital to do the necessary work that has to be done to to improve our fire resilience?

Good good questions and observation. Yeah. The this this project is really to to provide, again, this this secret coverage for this large area so that when, say, the city of Cupertino or any other public agency or a large landowner wanted to do treatments with that needed a that needed required CEQA coverage, they would have that in place mostly in place. So they're they have to fulfill a few other requirements, but but the bulk of that would be completed. So if a if a agency was to get a large grant or funding sources, we've saved them a lot of money by doing the sequel work.

So so if the city of Cupertino wanted to treat that area that kind of extended down into the city there, they would be saving some money on on CEQUA for sure. They'd still need to get money for the project itself, but but at least one of the one of the barriers to doing this type of work would be would be removed. And and it it makes it makes funding projects a lot easier. I know when we go after grants, if we can show we already have all the the kind of permitting environmental compliance in place, the funder knows that that's more money that that can be spent on actually doing the work instead of spending, you know, maybe a year or more on on environmental compliance work. So it's a it's it's a way of streamlining.

It's a way of really just streamlining really necessary work throughout our our region.

Question? Yeah. That's sure. Hold on.

Do we

have any other requests to speak? We have no speakers.

Close public comment?

Yeah. You can close public comment. I guess there's a final comment from each commissioner.

K. So following up on the question from from the resident, Can you give us I mean, each project is going to be different and will cost differently. What are the orders of magnitude that we are saving with the sequel coverage? So if I was gonna spend $10,000 on a project, just as an example, is it saving me a thousand? Is it saving me 5,000? What is that ratio approximately or roughly?

Well, you know, I'm I'm trying to think of a of a good example. A couple come to mind. We re did categorical exemption, which is kind of a a lower level CEQA document for smaller portions of of the grant area that I showed you earlier. Mhmm. Those and this is for maybe about thinking of an area that was about maybe 25 acres.

And the the the the money we spent on on permitting and and all that was around, I think, around $30,000. So and then the the project itself, you might spend $4,000 an acre. So, you know, a 25 acre project could cost a $100,000 for for the for the for the vegetation work itself. But if you already have, you know, a $30,000 worth of permitting out of the way, that's a significant savings. That's sort of a you know, there's a ballpark, but but I think it's a it's a valid example.

And, of course, the time would also be significant, right, saving almost a year.

Sure. Yeah. Some of these categorical exemptions, some of those don't take as long, you know, a matter of more, I think, three, four months, perhaps, maybe a little bit more, but but definitely saving time. This particular project that we've worked on, we've been doing for about a little over maybe a year and a half, Grace, something like that. Yeah.

I've been involved for only about six months, so I know there was a lot of work that happened before that. So yeah.

Yeah. But but yeah. I mean, an environmental impact report can take well over a year depending on on how it goes for larger projects.

Awesome. Alright. Great. Thank you so much, for the presentation.

You're welcome. And, if, there's any other follow-up questions, feel free to contact us. Think Britta, has our contact info, and you can certainly find find me at the FireSafe Council.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you.

Thanks. Thank you. Right. So we can now move on to monthly updates.

You wanna go first?

Oh, mine's short. Go ahead.

Okay. Okay. Then thank you for the opportunity to come

back,

showcase the new public safety reports that we have. The newsletter style is one that I'm actually getting used to as well. It's district wide, so some things will apply, some things won't. But I think certain things like what's happening on or what's happened on Highway 17 applies to everybody here, and then also maybe Highway Numb. As we start getting ready, you'll start seeing a slant towards the the WUI and some of the things that are gonna

be happening there.

So a little bit of info on on internal stuff as far as awards and other things. And I will encourage you to take a look

at those.

Very interesting. Some of them are fun to hear, and some of them should pretty inform it. As far as city of Cupertino,

the

overall call volume is is pretty typical. We have four four fires that we either categorize as vegetation structure or other. You can get fire of any size. And as far as the the number of frequency for the month of February, Four is actually not bad based on the on the weather and everything else. It was a pretty mild, structure, so we didn't lose a lot of property value when it comes to that.

There were no real significant events aside from this destructive fire that is listed, here at the bottom, but no civilians or firefighters were injured, and the structure fire was in a single family home. Unfortunately, I do not have the data for the incident narratives anymore. I I wanna try to make sure that I have that for you because I like to be able to tell you if family was impacted and if they had been displaced or if they cross them in. So and then the scale and how many units came in. It's nice to have that info for you.

So I'll I'll look for that to see if they've given us another route with the newer ones. Fire alarms, as you know, basically, any call for any kind of activation of of an alarm or basically a system that is intended to alert the transmits any kind of fire incident that may be occurring. And then the lion's share once again is our medical calls. So 71% of our calls are are medical in nature, and that is 200,000,000. Yes.

For that month, and service calls, once again, it's kind of a catch all. So anybody needing anything would be a service call. That could be from my my toddler is locked in the bedroom to anything like I have a really strange smell, and it's making me a little bit concerned. So those are the types of things or even in the neighborhood. Next to the community education. So this is from January 1 through the February. Schools at schools in session in full blast. So we have preschool, elementary school visits. Those are the numbers of the total students. So this may be two to three small assemblies, a couple of classrooms.

This is where we come in and we talk at the appropriate level for these kids to basically receive some fire safety, stop, drop, and roll, nine zero one, and things, and then those those are pretty typical programs that we have. So we've been doing that for a very long time. And then see the breakdown of kind of where they may have occurred. So the circle graph. Right?

You can

see that we also have CPR. Those are walk ins still. So if you have anybody, any group or any individual that wants to, you can schedule that through our website and come in and and leave it every at least once a week. Yeah. But by time, can actually just walk in and let us know that you wanna come in. Station tours. Yeah. We didn't see a lot of station tours this last month. Usually, it's a springtime thing. Seems and I think that we'll probably see some more of that and then community events. We had, a 150 people checking in at at the community events there. So, additional detail, I will start looking for

it as well. I'll try to tell you, and

some of these events are gonna be able know, about our safety fairs and it's on there. So I'll give you a better idea of how those break down. Alright. So this is right here. The bar on top of each stacked set of bar graphs for the for this histogram, they they show the baseline of standard.

The standard could be it's essentially the the one that we're striving for. So anything above that line mean that we're over that that standard, anything below it, we're below, or we're doing better. So the blue is a twelve month rolling average. So how have we done historically over the last twelve months? This could be something that could be impacted by any kind of staffing issues or station impact on the station because it's been closed for maintenance or something.

We have units that are out of the area, and there's you know, or large events that are happening on the. So these are the units, actually, things to get on the the twelve month rolling average. And then we have the current month average. So this is actually one I and we had a request for something that just told us a little bit more grand or a little bit more focused on, hey. How do we do last month or instead of these big averages that the details can be kinda lost.

So this is a a response to a request to say, how are we doing? So how are doing in Cupertino for, last month for call processing? That's the time that person's step or the dispatch picks up the phone and says, 911. What what is your emergency The point where they finish with the call processing. They also run, and they overlap with the turnout time. The turnout time is the crew getting the ring down. So there's a certain amount of information they know, Event nature, medical. Very, very serious, life threatening. So this would be the type of info you need. Don't need to know a lot more to get rolling on a call like that, so there's an overlap.

Looks like we've been doing a little bit better on the call processing call processing side than the twelve month rolling average, and they did have a CAD system installed. So probably a bit of now we're getting into our stride with the call takers, and I know that we picked up some additional folks that went through that training. There's a really significant washout rate, and they handle everything. All centers are at county call, sheriffs, ambulances, us, and there's a few others, rangers and a few others that they actually deal with. So they have a huge scope of responsibilities when it comes to the call processing side.

The total reflex time, so that's basically up to the point where we get to that call. And and there is the the urban and the rural are are numbers so that it's basically the density where we start getting to some of areas that we were looking at, the outskirts where there's less than a thousand per acre people. And so that's the difference. Those are the ones that are further out there.

So you

would see you should expect to see a little bit longer time and then the the averages. So we're actually doing fairly well against the the standards that we're stacked up. But that's once again, because Cupertino has three stations, and there there are more than one unit at most of those stations. So we have, like, three at the Cooper Kino. That does a dual. If they're to have that event or inching company or regular EMS or a ball of fire, then we have the the tiller or the the tractor drawn aerial, which is the big truck with two drivers. Maybe for the next.

Oh,

and there is actually on the bottom of that, there's it's broken up for fire and and medical. And you will see that the medical side, there's a little bit less security put on. You can get ready to go. And current safety standards have changed things from way back when where you just get in the rig and get dressed without a seat belt. But now everybody gets dressed fully before they get in.

They lock in and then safe response time, less injuries, things like that. Resulted from that practice. And then our response statistics. So for us, our structure fires, once again, this is a bit repetitive when it comes down to the the first numbers that we looked at. So total of of incidents for February.

When do we have about

see it. So Sixty hundred.

I saw it. I know I lost it. Anyway, 1,600.

Thank you.

And the number of incidents year to date, this one gives you a running average as far as compared to 2025, February February. Our number's about the same. So there you can see that there's actually a little dip coming out of January. I would attribute that mainly to weather and other things that are typical. And once again, we are at to the same point where we were pretty much before COVID and picking from there. The last piece, like I said, many wildfire parents.

So there

are gonna be a number of events in person this year. Really, what it comes down to is reviewing and understand So if every year you understand that a little bit more, you know, when it comes down to is that if you're ready, that's the preparation events. It goes hand in hand with all of the stuff you can do at your house and all of the stuff that you can do as a family to be ready to take off, including the decision making. So at what point will you feel the most comfortable leaving, which means people you're not really the type that that does well with stress. The the ready component means that you're set and go should be happening a little bit sooner than maybe your neighbor who who was a veteran of a pretty stressful situation.

So would say this is an individual thing as you start dealing with it and you start talking to people about it. This is this is a personal decision so that you know, and it has a lot to do with where you live. So with that, the wildfire ready ratings presentations, they they may sound the same, but they all also go into a little bit different nuance. We learn a little bit more as an agency and as as a fire service and how things are evolving. We learn from every every year's significant events.

You know,

there are more and more lessons starting. I see this this shift now. It's really turning to home hardening and some of the efforts. They're starting to become a little bit more clear. We know that zone zero was something that was supposed to be defined. It is. You can go to Board And Forest, get the the current draft, and they're supposed to be picking up again in April. So in Sacramento, they will be picking that up again. They fell behind and did not provide the guidelines for Zone 0, but it will be happening. So if you wanted to get a peek at it, it would be something that you can

do in order to prep.

This year, county fire is doing the inspections. There are a lot more residents in Cupertino that will be getting getting one because it is a, there are more houses and parcels that are part of the very high fire severity zone. This means that in the local response areas, we do have the ability to enforce, but it's gonna be education and assistance is gonna be the primary thing. Unless somebody is not not willing to help themselves or or if they need something else that would help motivate them, we're we're we're really looking to help people out. Now we're gonna have a cruise run through.

They're doing public right of way inspections. So they'll be driving through an area, and if they see something that triggers their interest, they will get out, do a little bit more close inspection of the of the of the society or the property. They will have a door hanger, and then we have data we have a tool that works in the field so that they can get referred over to us, and we will send a deputy fire marshal to do additional follow-up. And then they'll be notified of anything that they need to work on, and we will be around to help them get that stuff done. That works in conjunction with the wildfire workshop.

So a little bit of self promotion there from the fire prevention division. It is something that I think that we really need to stress, and I will leave I'll I'll end this by saying we gotta get our numbers up for Genesys Protect and alert SCC. It is one of the things that's coming up where people don't feel safe, especially when it comes to evacuations. A lot of effort by staff to put in the work to do the evacuation studies. They are looking at the areas that have the limited access.

These neighborhoods are identified. They're part of the safety plan and the general plan. So there's been a ton of work to support some real progress, but it doesn't work unless people SCC. But Genesys Protect, this has been in place for a while. It's paid for, and it's it's a tool that that you can use, and it'll tell you exactly from the incident commander who first gets eyes on the incident. So your time frame will be very, very short. That is the person who's telling you telling you to go and where to go, which way to go. So that's that's the thing about the Genesys Protect and the alert as we see that we really gotta get those numbers.

I will conclude with that.

If you have any questions, then we may have an answer.

I do have a couple of questions, but great report. Very much for all the great work you guys do. So I saw in the community classes and the the SEER classes, I see the elementary schools have, like, 80 students participate or something, whereas middle and high schools, zero. Is Is there any reason why and can you guys also engage the middle schoolers and high schoolers?

We could. Those are requested programs. So Okay. First question. If the if you have children at any school or you know anybody that has children at any school, tell them to request a program in Google. We have a we have, once again, age specific, grade specific programs that will come out. They're pretty theatrical and entertaining to keep the kids' attention. They're very interactive. And when the education division used to be under me, I went out and checked them out. I really took a look at how they were doing things, and it was really neat to see them interact with the kids.

They really like what they're doing. They do a good job, and the kids really have a great time with it, and they learn a lot. And there's always so kids love that. So request. Make that I mean, that's another component of awareness if you get kids out there. Let let the schools know to to let us know that they would like us to come out. And that is available on our website. So

Nice. Follow-up question on the newsletter distribution. So how is it getting distributed to keep it in our instance? Or is it like there is no push notification or anything. Right?

This is included in the city manager newsletter.

It is included?

I don't remember city.

Yeah. Get city manager newsletter.

I maybe I did not look at the report, but I had taken an I had a note last time that we were going to have staffers going to take an action to publicize the report on the city's social media. Yes. It is? Okay. One, that was not part of the meeting then, so I just didn't know whether it was there or not. And then further, to report on how well received the report was. I mean, do you have any statistics on how much that has been seen or not seen or anything? I don't. No. I'm from the city.

I'm about that. I'm sure you guys have it. It'd be great to know you have those as well as a county. But No. I don't. That's not Would we take an action to maybe figure out whether you know, how well is the, you know, city manager's report being seen and, therefore, all of the information? Okay. I mean, it's easy statistics that, you know, we can figure out. Okay. Sorry. You were gonna say? No. I'm

seeing these they're they're getting pushed some of the aspects of the engineering as well. I know there was a lot of there were a lot of requests saying, hey. Can we make this a little bit Mhmm. Again? That was interesting.

So

I'm glad to see that they are making changes. I think that I think getting it to Citi early enough, did did that get resolved? Was a little bit better this time?

Got it today.

I got it. I got it. So I will I will take that feedback back because this this commission meets as soon as this is the first one that goes out of all of them. So the the time frame that it's set gives everybody else a little bit of extra time, but we never seem to have a whole lot. And I think that would attribute to some of the challenges of it not looking like it's showing up because, I guess, quite frankly, it's not showing up till the last minute quite often. I will take that back. Actually, take that as an action to just look into it, and I'll see if I can

work with. One last question. On the Genesys Protect information, it's also part of the flyer about this information. This will go. It is.

I added that.

Oh, you added that. Okay.

And it's because there are a lot of things happening in Cupertino with regard to the. And I know that we have looked at the numbers in the past back even when when, oh, several years ago, did the numbers. There was a lot of opportunity and things that I I did not see over the last year back in Thomas here. I I didn't see that move a whole lot. And and people are really there's there's a lot of public there's a lot of public curiosity.

There's a lot of public concern. Concern. There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of other things that are popping up throughout the city right now where people are very concerned, and there's a lot of spillover. And and one of the things is is like, okay. How do you know how and when to evacuate? And that tool has been in place for four years? Three, four? Three, four years.

Genesys product.

Yeah. It was originally Zonehaven. First, and then it went through Genesys protect. It it it is a it is a very it seems to be very stable based on my experience. I get the notifications as a as a duty chief when a zone changes classification throughout. So

if it's

upgraded or downgraded or changes or physically I I see it. And I think that for us, we have been able to use it for events, and it and it really works. So to know what to do with regard to the incident, which way you may want to go or like to go, and then that that's what you get from Genesys Protect.

Near real time or real time?

Yeah. It's pretty darn close to real time. And then when it comes to where do you go, that's where AlertNCC comes in. It'll tell you your evacuation errors. It'll tell you cooling centers. It'll tell you, you know, if there's any kind of relief or aid support services, things like that, I'll tell you. And then they will also tell you when to go back.

Right?

So so together, they work as a team, and they pretty much fill most of the gaps that anybody would need in order to to to keep you informed as a person had to leave the home their home or neighborhood or somebody that you you know that is is affected. That stuff coming in as well.

So you said earlier that the number of people signed up is very low. So you have some stats, like, many people signed up for?

I have some that are a little stale, but they're in the

You don't have newer ones.

They were

in pain.

It's, like, less than 20% of or or.

So do you have any flyers or or some material promoting Genesys Protector sign up also?

Actually, they're pretty much on every single flyer sent out. There's Genesys Protector, and they're also in the WUI notices that are going out this year or every year. There's a there's a a QR code with all of them.

So if I may ask, Martha, so I saw the I was both focused on the last few months. In the library, there is only one single page kind of a flyer there, and and that also vertical. It's like a a horizontal flyer sitting vertically. So I don't know how many people are actually looking into it. But I was wondering, is there any way we can especially when the light technical library department seems interested to collaborate, can we expand the flyer? Can we put them together side by side in the same display for the library?

Sure.

Okay. So so

So what is the specific action?

Also, earlier, the alert as you see the QR code and the banner, right, it is already there in the library. That's what the research marked on the ID. So and that that is like a flyer. It's a horizontal flyer sitting vertically in one corner. It's it's it along with the items. So it's not highlighting that. So if if if our file department is recommending, right, I think we need to put both, not only Alexis, Alexis is CC, the QR code, but also Genesys product QR code or the sign up link more visible, especially when library is interested to partner with the public safety commission. That's my advice.

Go ahead.

My my numbers for for 05/14/2025, 15%. Thousand three hundred seventeen. And then does 5700856 sound right for the census ish?

Yeah. So,

yeah, these are my demo. Thing thing is is that we're still we're at 15%. We can't be that far off. Thing is the the the recommendation essentially would be that at every fair, every festival, every whatever gathering, have somebody there that actually helps people install it. Be probably the the the recommendation that I like, if I was they said go out and make sure that people get signed up.

That's that's one of the types of ways that I would do it because if if you walk away with a QR code people don't typically do this, and this is usually one of the biggest components of of fear that people have. They don't know what to expect. They don't know where they're gonna hear it. They don't know that. They don't so that unknown is, like, they're creating a lot of if they had an idea of how it worked, you can see a video.

We even have our own on on how Genesys Protect, and it shows them that it's one of our VCs that is going out there. We have an extraordinary amount of experience when it comes to wildfire. We send people throughout the state, and we are the region, our coordinator for the area and the area coordinator. So we carry those roles. It's county fire.

So Cupertino has a a a pretty straight connection to the resources that are coming in and out, and I'm one of the people that sits in one of those roles. And that's why the evacuations and people knowing that they need to leave as soon as possible is one of those things that there is an opportunity to do better. Absolutely. This is this is the part people this is the part that people say, what are you gonna do about it? Say, I want me to give you this again. It's basically itself.

Yeah. So I think I may also request Martha or the city staff, right, to share those materials so that we can we can put it in the public forums like Nextdoor. Also pass it to other other organizations like schools and others if they can also display the same.

I have a request. I don't know if this is part of that could be part of the presentation for next time. We do I would like to see an example of an evacuation route capacity situation. Because I think the you know, we have a a very large area on the West Side that is in the red fires. Mhmm.

And we're giving, for whatever reason, permits to build all kinds of things on that side. And we have really just two streets where people have to get out of. One is McClellan, the other one is Rainbow. And the connecting road between them is Bug. And we have a lot of development happening there. And people trying to escape out of it. The evacuation and the ground capacity is going to be really shimmer. We need to understand what that capacity is. How does it work? Can you make a presentation or send us some information on that?

What does the city have on that?

I believe that's part of the health and safety element draft. And that was published for public comment earlier this week or last week.

I think that today is the last day or something to provide

a And tomorrow is the last day. Yeah. Yeah.

So so, yes, that is actually I I was I spent most of the day today in those areas and driving those roads and measuring roads. So that's actually very, very high on our list, specifically for the reason you called out, and that is the developments occurring. So I also happen to have this already up for the evacuation report. Mhmm. And I did work on the safety plan and the general plan elements just sent.

So to would it be to provide a different a report on evacuation routes and what's found in these reports, or would it be something different that you're looking at?

Don't know exactly what is in those reports, and I was gonna take a look at it and provide my own information and my own feedback on that. However, it would be useful to pick the red red zones Yep. And talk to us evacuation capacity of those routes.

Okay. I can what I will do is I'll take a look at the report, see if I can marry it with the changes in the in the map. So I do have that information as well. Mhmm. What's changed? Mhmm. I can see if I can put together a shared presentation with the intent to explain what report is and how things kinda have changed.

Hi, Sherry. May we go to public comment?

Yeah. Sure.

We have no speakers.

Alright.

Okay. We're just we should have his thought.

Oh, I apologize.

Yeah. Go ahead.

No. I was just saying I can try to explain. I can either do that, or I can bring something as a as a as a an outline of the types of things that I might be able to provide.

It might be more interesting to get the to actually see presentation.

Perfect.

And then if you want to give us your regular report as an outline, I mean, just give us a report so we can you know? It's pretty standard, the report that we get every time. So it's pretty good, but it's very informative. However, something different.

Mhmm. Okay. I will put something together that focuses on evacuation throughout the designated high fire severity zone.

K. And then this is from the city's GIS team, the service finder app. If you well, that's just everything highlighted. Okay. Clicking on hazard awareness evacuation zone. Click on any zone, and this will pull up a link to

load.

Here we go.

These are potential evacuation routes.

Yeah. Yeah. That's true. But what we're talking about I mean, those are obvious routes about I live in that area, so I'm exactly what you're talking about. However, what I'm asking for is the capacity given what we have. That's slightly different than just providing the routes.

I I just wanted to make sure

that Sure. But it's a very useful link that you provided. If you can go back and just tell us what that link is or put it in the meeting minutes, that will be fine. Okay.

Alright. Cool. Thanks so much. Yeah. Least we can move on to the next word from.

Alright. Good evening, everyone. So support's gonna be a little bit odd because what happened on January 1, we switched to a new record management system, which is Axon, and we integrated a lot of other information into this other system called Peregrine. So currently, the way that we write reports right now, there is Axon, which is our crime report database, and then you have Crossroads, which is our accident and citation database. Neither one of those two is very good for obtaining information.

So we have a program called Peregrine, which kinda puts everything together and puts in stats forms. Where I'm going with this is that this report today, and I noticed that my priority one calls are unusually high. 14, apparently, in January and five in February. So I have to go back and and do a little more research that I got this information today because these numbers seem a little high for the priority calls, and I think there might be some corrections to some of this this information. So with that being said, it's just some some growing pains right now with this new RMS system.

The new RMS system, which recommendation system dropped the alpha at the end of all police reports. So any police report has the 25, which or 26 for the year, the Julian date, the Julian calendar, and then the event number. Problem is now it's dropped the alpha. So it usually say C For Cupertino, S For Saratoga, L For Los Altos Hills. So it makes it really convoluted and complicated to search for individual reports for Cupertino because there is no alpha designator.

So you have to kinda figure out some other way. So, anyways, what I'm trying to get with this, I think these these numbers right here that we just got that I unfortunately got today, I haven't been able to look at them because there's there might be some inaccuracies. So but this is what the system kinda gave us with Paragon. So and so we'll we'll start with this, but we're gonna have to I'm gonna do some tweaking or looking into some of this information. So moving on to the next slide of the property crimes that we've had in town.

We ended very high with residential burglaries in in Cupertino the 2025 with with a 102. From the previous one, we had 78. Residential burglaries on the rise again. During the state of the city, I did bring up that we may have to take some other innovative approaches to try to bring those numbers down, whether it's, you know, rekindling some some neighborhood watch meetings or rekindling some some some other groups so we can try to get some more information because these these are burglaries that are occurring, again, with simple things like people not turning their alarms on or, you know, so so things that that people might be forgetting. But we're gonna have to step up our game here for the next coming year of of putting some public awareness on residential brokerage out there.

So

and then I wanna talk a

little bit about ALPR things because this is on this is we did discuss this during the state of the city address. Additionally, it was also, you know, something that that we brought to a lot of residents here in Cupertino. But, essentially, what happened was Mountain View the city of Mountain View had flock AOPRs, and and their system was accidentally sharing with federal agencies, which is against the law in the state of California. It wasn't Mountain View's issue. Mountain View didn't do this.

It was more of a flock issue. But then as a result, it's causing a lot of issues of trying to contract with flock as a vendor because the senate bill that was put out is that that we don't we shouldn't be sharing with any federal agencies, period, including ICE. Right? So in January, Los Altos Hills decided to end their relationship with Flock because of the possibility that federal government or maybe even ICE may be obtaining some information without us knowing or without, you know, Flock even knowing. So they scrapped their they scrapped their their agreement with Flock, basically, back in January.

Nonview did the same thing. They they actually just turned off all the cameras until they can fix something with their Flock cameras. As a result, we had gone to the board of supervisors with an updated surveillance use policy. Our surveillance use policy is what allows us to operate and manage data for these contract cities in Cupertino and Saratoga for their data that they collect with their license plate readers. None of the license plate readers are owned by the sheriff's office.

They're all owned either by the city or they're private, by the cities of Cupertino and Saratoga. So the surveillance use policy gives us the authority to manage the city's data. What we had done is we had gone back to the board of supervisors with a policy that drops the term flock from the from the policy. So it would just says license plate reader technology. And, again, reassured what what steps we take in order for our data not to be breached.

Biweekly audits, monthly, audits where we scrub the data, plus a yearly report back to the board of supervisors with any deficiencies or any problems that we encountered during that year. We had a lot of public comment from from people in the audience directed at San Jose and other agencies. I think it was very unclear of of what the direction was, but, essentially, what the board of supervisors approved our our surveillance use policy, but then also added the caveat that we could no longer contract, manage, or even access flock. So, essentially, terminating the program right there, basically, for flock. The city of Cupertino's flock contract was due to expire that week.

So it wasn't very much of a you know, for Cupertino, it's not as big as a loss as it was for Saratoga who is who has a contract with Flock up to December 2028, a financial one that they paid for. So there's some things that are going on with that. And, essentially, where I'm going with this is that every every city in this county has taken a step back and reevaluating their relationship with VLOC. City of San Jose came out the other day and said that they're actually gonna go to a policy that's more in line with what we used to do. That means biweekly audits, monthly scrubbing of data.

Because right now, their policy was a year long retention. We have a thirty day retention on on AOPR stuff. Additionally, we're talking to other vendors that haven't come across a little bit hot water in the news lately, like VLOC has, such as Axon, to see if they can fit the need in the meantime or assist us in in some sort of patch now that we've lost access to flock cameras. So we're we're in the trying to come up with another solution right now when it comes to that. So I think they're a valuable tool.

It's helped us a lot in solving crimes, preventing crimes. And it would this was not at fault of any of our staff members doing anything inappropriate with any data. We we we like I said, we have a strict policy, probably the model policy for the state of California. And it's just the stance that the board of supervisors took having the fact that they control our actions saying that they do not want us associating with flock because of the possibility that ICE may be able to obtain the data and use it for immigration or reproductive policies that we have. So, you know, afraid of for example, if Texas outlawed abortions, if a person from Texas came to California to have an abortion, that that that Texas could access that information.

So it's a lot of stuff that that that block in. And I'm I'm gonna be honest. The Flock did not do themselves any favor by not coming out and saying anything that it was their mistake, that they owned up to it, or anything at all. They kinda stood back and, unfortunately, made decision for a lot of other municipalities to just say we're dropping in. And we're not the only ones. There's there's tons of municipalities all across The United States that are just dropping. Their contract is blocked right now. So with that being said, I said we're we're working on another possibility for for AOPR technology because it is valuable. We're looking at Axon, a couple issues with Axon. They don't contract with local municipalities.

They don't contract with police departments. So it's gonna be it's gonna be a process, but but we're we're we're looking for other solutions. So all my things to do for next time, I gotta take a look at these response times because I I don't think they're correct, and I don't think we had 14 priority one calls. And, additionally, our system that we collect our accidents and citation is not feeding into the system called Peregrine, so I don't have any of that information right now. Growing pains.

January 1 is a big switch for us. We went to a a a robust RMS system from what we used to have. And so and we went went to a more nationally recognized standard of NIBRS versus what we were doing before with just our reading reports. So it's it's gonna be a step up for us, but there's gonna be some growing pains. And I appreciate everyone's patience while we sort this out with all of our vendors. So with that, I will conclude. And if I you have any questions about anything, I can have an answer.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for the report. So just to, like, clarify, so it's like even though so, basically, what has changed is the policy language is, like, now, like, vendor agnostic. Yes. Right? And then that's, like that's just there in place, and then the thing that's pending is, like basically, like, the search for, like, an alternative vendor. Is that the correct understanding? Yes. Yep. Got it.

Yes. So so the very good suggestion on the monthly scrubbing. Right? So was that implemented in currently?

Yes. Yeah. So we we we started supervisor Justin Bidien was very strict about this policy, made it really, really strict. Again, a lot of agencies do monthly audits or or bimonthly audits, and they do yearly retention on data. We were biweekly audits, monthly audits where we scrub the data. That means we delete all the information, all the license plate numbers and permission, basically, and then a year report to the board of supervisors of everything within that whole month and and and confirming that we had done everything we're supposed to do. So

Excellent.

So so you were talking about this Cupertino City contract being was up for renewal within that week. And so so right now, the Cupertino City contract also terminated? I don't know.

The city could from what I understood talking to city manager is that the the the flock ALPR contract was set to expire that week. Obviously, if we would've had our policy approved and it gave the to the opportunity to also continue their contract with Flock. I don't know what the situation is with it's a it's a it's a contract between the city of Cupertino and Flock, but it has nothing to do with us at all. The the only thing that we got got hit with the the sheriff's office is shall not operate Flock.

Is that is the instruction you received from the. No. No. No. That's the Oh, from the correct Board

of Board of Superlighters. Yes. Yeah.

So so you so let me understand this. So the Santa Clara County said you can't work with Wong. Yes. But had our contract not expired at the time that it did, you would have continued to work with Phuong as a city? No. We shouldn't have. We we just lost money.

Yeah. You you would just lost money. Yeah. But it it's so, like, the city of Saratoga, they've paid their contract till December 2028. So but now we can't operate or touch flop. So there's a there's a financial loss there for them. The CEO of Cupertino's contract was set to expire. So I don't know. There might be a financial loss, but I'm not really sure what that is. But it's Okay.

Now we're talking about days. We're not talking about December 20 Like, sir oh, god, Saratoga. Our intent, again, was to go neutral on the the the vendor and more pro the technology. But the direction, again, from the board of supervisors was to the to the sheriff is that we don't manage access or contract with law.

So Thanks. I'll see.

I'll see. Oh, yeah. I guess so to the point about, like, now the search is, like, underway for vendors and stuff. Yep. I guess, is there, like, a rough timeline as to, like, what they've said about standing up those capabilities?

I I think I have. I I don't have a rough timeline. Unfortunately, we're we're pressuring Axon to to help us out with this because not just us, by the way. We're we're actually we're actually saying, hey. You got you got a good you got a good opportunity here to come in and and jump in because Los Altosills is is could use ALPRs.

Mountain View could use them. Saratoga, Cupertino. And and I and I I'm afraid the writing's on the wall that a lot of other agencies are gonna start dropping their their agreements with law just because of the it's never it's not been any agency that's done anything wrong. This has been more of a issue with their end and their and the way that they, I guess, they do their coding or something. So

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Because I feel like I remember when the original agreement was being discussed, like, I felt like I felt like we were asking questions about, like, oh, like, is it certain that they won't have access to, like, share the data with other people? And, like, I I I feel like the answer was yes back then.

Yeah. So it's

I mean, I think this is yeah. Yeah.

From what I understand and that that this is not accurate, but in in the case of Mountain View, it was a it was a single license plate reader camera that was lent to them from FLAC that was either not reset or something wrong with it where it was sharing with two air force bases and, like, a national park. Right? So it wasn't like they were sharing with ICE or Department of Homeland Security. It was other federal agencies that have flocked. So so it it might not and, it's I don't this wasn't a city mountain use issue.

However, frequent audits, frequent scrubbing would have probably caught that, and and not to blame any fingers of at Mountain View or anybody else, but but we had, like I said, the the model policy of biweekly checks and monthly scrubbing of data. So could it be could it be cloud? Who knows?

So Mountain View comes under Senator County?

No. They're their own municipality. They they just made the decision to not work with Flock anymore because of the inadvertent sharing with a federal agency.

I have a question to the city staff. Right? So do we I mean, I understand the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors currently decided to not to use this ALPR system altogether, but

I'm not sure. We don't we don't have access to them anymore. I know in Saratoga, the cameras are still active, but nobody's accessing the data. So

Right. So let me understand this. Assuming that it is active even in your team, that data is stored regardless?

It's being stored right now. At least in in Saratoga, it's being stored per our policy, which is thirty days and then delete it. So but, again, couldn't tell you because I don't have any access Or to

or actually, yes.

It's from me.

So

Unfortunately, but Yeah. So so my question is, does the city still has contract with Flock, or is it expired?

I my understanding is Yeah.

No. We we do not have a renewed contract with Flock.

Okay. So even if the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors, let's say, week that you go ahead to continue with the Flock, we the city of Cupertino doesn't have a contract until a new contract is in place, Cupertino City's data won't go to share its office.

I can answer that. So, essentially, what would happen is if if the board of supervisors kinda said, okay. You know, we'll let you work with Flock until you find a new vendor. Uh-huh. The city of Cupertino could renew their contract with Flock.

They could renew?

They could renew.

Oh, I think it it will take some time for the contract.

It would be like a an agreement that's turned on or Oh, okay.

So it should be quick. Sorry. Go ahead. What's an issue of question?

Oh, no. I I have a follow-up question for the city staff because I contacted as a resident, cumulative resident to the supervisor Margaret. So I got a response saying that they sent a request to the city's leader community leadership nearly a month before the I'm reading the email. Okay? We we reached out to your city's leadership nearly a month before the policy question on automated license plate reader camera assistance was scheduled to come back to the board of supervisors on 02/24/2026.

Unfortunately, we did not receive any input. So I made the best decision I could with with the information I had. I mean, it is a long email, but I'm just reading a small part of it. So I was wondering, is it like something we did not, as a Cupertino city, did not send as a strategy wise? Or

I I don't know. I was not involved in that.

Okay. So it is something we can ask city to find out? I mean, city staff to find out?

To ask what the city manager, if if anything was sent?

We can probably

the email to her and figure out if there was something we could have done differently.

Yeah. I mean, it's coming at a formal email. As I can, not to not to the public city commissioner as to the resident. Right? So it says

You can still forward that. I think that's perfectly fine to forward that to.

If you'd like to forward that to me,

and then I can

Okay. I'll forward that. I can speak to

the county's behalf. We did not receive any inquiries because what happened was our it was on the calendar. They tabled it and said that they were gonna do some follow-up. We, the sheriff's office, did not get any questions or any additional follow-up questions from the board of supervisors. So I don't know if they reached out to members of the city staff, but I know in our end, we did not get anything from them.

Thanks for the clarification. Yeah. Sure.

So follow-up to the comment you made that, you know, the ALPR system itself is still functional? No. What did you say? So

from my understanding, with the ending of the contract, part of that is that Flock would take the cameras back.

So we paid for those cameras.

It's more it's more like I think we leased those.

We've yeah.

We didn't use the cameras? Okay. We didn't buy it.

No. No. That was not

an option. They're not if

They're not for bit. Yeah.

If they get damaged or they're flocked property, they replace them, but it's they're leased. You lease them for a certain time.

So when the contract is done, they take they take them away anyway.

That's the that's the I can tell you that I I just spoke to Los Altosulos the other day. There's still some that are still up there. So but no they're not on. Nobody's accessing them. So

Probably they didn't. Oh.

There'll probably be some time.

So in the case of Saratoga, what are they doing with the cameras?

In their case, they still have a contract in flux. So their the cameras are still on. The cameras are still capturing data. They're being scrubbed every 30 days. Just don't have access to the data.

I think Startover has a very good policy. Like, they're they're following the sheriff's office recommendations. But, I mean, but

but The sheriff's panel. Actually, like Yeah.

Look at it.

The sheriff's office can.

Oh, okay.

So all of this misunderstanding started because

Of Mountain View.

Mountain View noticing that one It wasn't

just Mountain View. Denver had issues. Different other other cities, other municipalities. If look at the news, a lot of agencies are reporting accidental sharing to federal agency that they were not authorized to do.

South federal.

And so it wasn't, again, not a problem on these police municipalities. It was more of a flock issue. Mhmm.

Mhmm.

And I can't and I there's there's zero not a case I can point to where this led to the deportation or some immigration status problem. However, that's where the problem is where where we could tell you, we're not sharing with anybody, but in the day I've been in it, and a lot of people would say the same thing. However, when you find out that you had been, it's a problem. Right?

Yes. For sure.

Did the privacy receive this Privacy receive this concern? Yeah.

Okay. As we move on to public comment.

I'm sorry. Okay. One sec.

What as a concern, since

Give her just one second so she can pull

up the timer.

Concern me just turn on the timer for you.

So

go ahead. Okay. So concern says

I I heard your statistics about crime rates up. You all probably see the next door posts. People, you know, coming through doing things. I've seen the TV ads where people drive into a store, and and with three or four people, in a few minutes, I'll take out all the electronics in the store or jewelry in the store, and then go to another county, perhaps, or wherever. It's a concern system, we just want you to do the best for us as possible.

And unfortunately, it appears to this concern, Susan, that the ice overlay has so biased decision making against common sense. And in today's environment, where there is the risk of of alien actors coming across state boundaries, we want the ability for the sheriff's department to work with with city agencies, other county agencies, state agency, and the FBI without all of this politics as an overlay that impedes progress. And so I encourage you to get the city to do the right thing.

We have no remaining speakers. That's true.

Alright. Sounds good. Any final commissioner comments? No. Great. Yeah. Want the the discussion on fraud. Alright. It's regarding that.

Yeah. I I didn't do too much research, but I got some notes. And I think I do have one call to action item. So I think I have seen with my collaboration with the residents through either WhatsApp or Nextdoor or, like, one on one conversations. There is a lot of scams. The scams are definitely increasing. Right? Whether it's they're saying that it's a cheap vehicle. Somebody's trying to sell in next door from out of state, or it could be the emails, the tech support. Even on the my Cupertino City e official email, I'm getting so many emails.

Right now, have, like, probably five or six spam emails. I don't know what we are doing I mean, the city's technology department is doing, but that's separate matter. The more of the scams are increasing, whether it's law, romance related, or government government personal input and personalization. I think the national losses are also I I was hearing the radio the other day. Looks like the national losses are in billions, and California is on top third or fourth state overall for this scams.

So I think it's a it's a a key public safety issue. So I think it's impacting the financial security and trust of of the the community community and overall well-being. So I think we we really thank our sheriff's office for all the stop scams. Again, a seniors campaign or slow it down, investigate before you act kind of campaigns. I think also yeah.

I think my recommendation would be to increase the frequency of, like, workshops with the multilingual options, like, with some real life examples to increase the awareness, especially to the request of the sheriff's department. And also to the city staff, maybe, you know, we we could reach with the city newsletters putting information information on the city website, especially in multi again, I repeat multilingual that we reach a small audience. And yeah. And also, when possible, also collaborate with other organizations like ARCs or the Santa Clara County elder fraud unit based on the feasibility and possibility. And I think I recommend we take a call to action, draft a commission recommendation to the city council for funding and a staff report to to overall on this initiative of creating awareness on the scans.

Yeah. Just as a follow-up to that, I have the same concern. The bigger concern for me is, you know, the bots themselves that are being created as a result of this AI. So then now we have there's one thing when you have a couple of individuals that are doing something that gives you the wrong information, but then when they create bots that are actually talking to each other and make it seem like it is a valid, you know, issue or, you know, it's a viral event or a viral then comes more chore. But the answer to figuring out all these problems is at the bottom of it as well as education.

The more you know about it, the more you're less likely you are going to to get it. It doesn't mean that you have a 100% thing that you'll always fall for something. One of the things that kind of irritates me, but the city IT department does, they I'm sure you all get it too. You know, before, No whatever. Every third day, I get something else.

It's like phishing attacks or something. Now it's it's kind of annoying, but it only takes, like, five, ten minutes to do that. I think that if there was some way we could roll it out as a volunteer thing to the population in general, that might be that might be I mean, I'm going down into the detail here, but it's just the fact of, you know, we have many many avenues for for education go through the, you know, sheriff's department. We can go through our senior center. We could go through, you know, the various organizations within within the city that can help, you know, through the rotary, through the lions, through the through the CLF.

There's so many organizations here, and we can all sort of pool resources and then continue the series, so to speak.

Yeah. So, yeah, I so I I I was, like, digging into two things. Mhmm. So one was actually, like, thought about so, like, in the twenty tens, I think, in general, there was, like, a very successful it's a you argue on the merits of it, but, like, fairly successful campaign, like, nationally, right, about, like, basic cybersecurity. Right? Like Mhmm. Don't reuse passwords. Like, don't, you know, write passwords down. Like, try not to write passwords down. Maybe use, like, a password manager.

And then, like, of course, like, now, most people know these terms, like phishing and, like that was, like, reasonably successful. Like, obviously, it's not gonna be a 100%, but reasonably successful for, like, making people aware of, like, that iteration of the Internet. And it's, like, now I guess, what's actually needed is actually less of the same. Like, I think people just, like, fall asleep if we if you give them, like, a webinar or something like that. But I think what might work is maybe sharing information about threats that are completely novel.

Like, so, for example, recently, there was a study that was performed, which is, like like, this thing called a Turing test. Right? Just, like, can person, like, distinguish whether something is a machine or a human? But there's actually, like, a voice version of this now. So, like, AI is, like, really good at sounding exactly like a human. There's this new like, entirely new class of scams happening where, like, these numbers will just bombard, like, a senior's phone number. And then, like, it'll basically the AI will basically start elaborating on some, like, urgent situation. Like, oh my god. Like, I'm in trouble. Like, I need I need you to, like, log on to Wells Fargo and, like, send me whatever.

Right? And it's, like, this is a completely novel class of threat, and, like, the solutions are also fairly novel. Like, for example, I was, like, asking some questions to a professor at UC Berkeley about this, and he was saying, like, the solution is actually very, like, low tech. It's like you should actually establish, like, a safe word of some kind Mhmm. With, like, your family members. It's like almost sounds kinda like dystopian or like sci fi, but it it works. Right? So maybe we can include something like that in the Scene magazine or something like, oh, just like AI cybersecurity tip of the month or something like that. Just like a simple, like, low lift thing that we could do, I think, to on these, like,

novel things. That actually happened to my cousin.

Oh, yeah. There you go.

She's not exactly you know, she's she's a computer literal person. And she actually had some somebody had actually write down a voice of her son Yeah. And said that he was being arrested and that they needed to send money for his bail. She tried to call him. The fool was at work and didn't pick up phone, so there was general panic all around. But they finally got around to a friend who's also at work and asked him to call home. And so they asked him where he was, and he says, I'm at work. So then that's how the whole thing it for the for the half an hour, they had the conversation. I mean, when she told me the story, I thought this is ridiculous. How could you believe it?

But when she explained the fact that she tried to reach him and he did not answer his phone

Yeah.

It tends to put a doubt when you actually hear his voice.

Yeah.

And they are so close. You know? Yeah. And this is from a person who's computer. Yeah.

Of course.

So and it's been happening for a few times. I mean, you know, this is definitely and the say and like you said, the safe word is something we've established in our family. Yeah. It's a silly word, but still, you know, nobody else would know that.

Right.

Yeah. Totally. So I think yeah. I definitely, like, move to maybe, like, department like, the communications department here at Citi staff could, like, send over some information that

we and tricks.

Yeah. Exactly. Tips and tricks for staying safe.

The Or or even that, you know, recognizing that phishing email. Some five minute thing that we go through every week, I get something from them. Saying it's phishing or something else or something else. They're constantly sending. And, of course, there are I think a lot of the emails that are coming through into our account are actually IT testing us.

Yeah. Yeah. I

I thought that, but we we

are It's quite possible. Alright. Possible outside. Yeah. But Yep. But all of these, I think and the bottom line being that education and how we get there

Yeah.

Some tips and tricks or actual, you know, quick classes

Yeah.

Five minute will be the difference. Go ahead.

Yeah. I have one other thing that I was too as well, which is so, like, to your point about how, like, now, like, social media and, like, a lot of the platforms that we as, like, residents Mhmm. Spend a lot of time on are, like, slowly starting to get inundated, right, with, like, a lot of, like, AI generated content, like, whether it's bots or people, like, whatever. Like, to to really I maybe, like, address this. Right?

It's like there probably needs to be some kind of, like, legislative push. Like, maybe I was thinking, like, we could, you know, talk to assembly member Patrick Arends, like, kinda understand, like, what's the temperature like in Sacramento about, like, just making it obvious that something has been AI generated. Right? Like, I don't know, like, for example, on LinkedIn, if a picture is AI generated, there's, like, a tiny, like literally, you have no idea what that symbol is, but there is a symbol of some kind. It's, like, just there. But I feel like it would just make quality

warning of cigarette packets. It's not

like that. It's not like that. Like, the whole thing is, like, it's very inconspicuous. Right? So, like, something that could, I think, greatly impact safety and, like, make life safer on the Internet is, like, just making it obvious that, like, yeah, this is, like, AI generated. But, obviously, as a city of Cupertino, we don't have the, like, the firepower to, like, get something done like that. But we can maybe schedule some kind of meeting, maybe, like, send an email to assembly member to kinda get his thoughts on what can we do legislatively or push forward legislatively.

He has a meeting from the

March 17. Oh, like a town hall. Town hall? Oh, okay.

So I think that's I think it should be outside the store. It might be Yeah.

It would be outside. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess, like, in summary, I guess, two two things from that I was thinking of, like, one, like, the tips the tips that we can inject into the scene and the newsletter. And then number two, starting if we can

Okay. You know. Yeah. I think I think let's let's come to I know too many ideas. Right? Let's come to those. So

the third one I would add I mean, the path of one is outside of the scope of the same thing. So the tips and tricks, definitely. But I would like to see if we could have some way to have a quick no. A link to an education that IT partner provide us. Something that they can

To the residents.

To the residents, you know, which is voluntary. So we're not forcing everybody to do that. But if you want to get educated, here's a vignette. And same under the tips and tricks. Mhmm.

I don't know. I feel like just speaking as, I mean, just speaking as, like, resident's perspective, like, I don't know. I feel like I feel like something like that would be, like, very high lift. Mhmm.

People have very less attention span nowadays. If you say rhyming oh, I I heard some other commissioners are also upset. It's only rhymings they need to do. Somehow, you're asking.

I mean, there are for sure. I mean, when you get one every month, you look at it like, I know already what to do here. But there are people who are interested in it, and it's giving them the option. If there is something available, send it. You don't want you find that no one's signing up for it, you can always cancel that.

Okay. I

guess it's just like like some someone needs to, like, put in the like, someone needs to, like, spend time, money, and effort on that. Right?

And also about maintaining the document or the training material.

What I'm asking is, is there anything that the IT department already has?

I think the compliance, regulatory requirements, all that has to be reviewed. Right? The training material when it went to this. I mean, I don't know. I I I can't

see So maybe the action would be that we work with TIG.

To see if it easy Yes. Training. Okay. Yeah. Let let me Because

they have at least so I mean, last year, had two or last year or the year before. Mhmm. They had two such events that they would have, like security, online security. I don't know how but the attendance also was gone, but at least they had the event. And this is something the technology can be comes right

on Yes. The ACC company come to conduct this.

It comes right on their

Yeah. I I I think too much participation in the TICC company lost time. I I attended the session, but I don't think it is a great participation. Okay. I think let's agree on the action items, recommendations. So I think, again, I I appraise Sheriff's office, right, for their their campaigns. I want to ask Sheriff's office if they have any in 2026 scheduled, like, against seniors. Right? Any stops stop scans against seniors kind of campaigns or anything scheduled in the CooperTim of the spin and center of

I could check. They just did a couple of them. So I know they've done a couple.

Okay. We do them here at the group senior

center to Saratoga senior center. So I know that I'm trying to check, but we just did a few.

So Okay.

Yeah. That's the senior center is where I was thinking, like, this education stuff.

Right. And if if they're conducting even if it's a nearby city, I think we should push that information to the residents. That could be very valuable. Again, we don't know how many people will attend, but I think we'll reuse or we'll use the existing portal. That's one action item. Right? And the second one is boost outreach. Right? That's what you're saying. Distribute tips on red flags, tools, like, I've been advocating on Nextdoor very too much about how to call how to block the calls, right, from iOS or Android devices and all. So so and other tips. Right? And I think this outreach, right, I think we should go to city newsletters website. And, of course, we can push it on Nextdoor's and senior centers and libraries. Posting these tips.

It could be, like like you said, monthly, not too much at the same time. Right? But

Yeah. Like, even just, like, one per edition of, like, scene, I think would just be, like, huge net positive. I guess, like, would that be up to us to come up with the list of things, or would that be something that

No. I can reach out to and put in a comms request or communication.

Okay. But we can we can send any, like, a kind of thing to you, and you can circulate it. Yes. Okay. Okay. So I think then we can informally collaborate and pull all the ideas and give it to you. Right? And

I mean, we're getting close to the brand act. If you have We each send it to her.

You can

email it it to to me. Me.

Okay. We each send the recommend the the, like, tips on red flags, tools, card blocking, etcetera. We send it to you, and the city staff will see explore putting in the newsletter and website and also posting it on the senior centers and libraries. Okay. I think that's the crisp action item. Yeah. K. And the the other one I have is draft the commission recommendation to city council for funding and the staff report to further explore this?

I don't know, Lindsay, that we can make a recommendation to council. That's not on the agenda. That's a really good question I can ask.

I'm not sure.

Okay. I mean, we can get the Yeah.

We can make recommendations. They can

ignore it.

I mean, I think they they they have the technology on the process. Right? We can

yeah. We're we're asking this like like. Oh.

Oh, I see. It's real. Perfect. That's great. Yeah. I think these are only the the three three action items we are getting. Right? One is leveraging Sheriff's office campaigns and the circulating it to

Of course.

Keep it in our strengths, boost outreach, tips, red flags, and then the commission recommendation.

I think So the commission recommendations, what's the what's, the output of that account?

To get a staff report on how do we increase the overall

alertness. I see. And

also, I'm thinking, like

Or so that

would basically be, like, city staff, like, doing research kind of? Or

Are you similar to any staff or staff people? Correct?

I think

we might want to just when you look at this tab recommendation

Mhmm.

We want to be more specific about what you want them to research on. So I would even say that we should first look at the TIP commission and see if they have something that they can or they have something Oh,

that's great. Yeah. Because they conducted the session also recently. The AICC committee conducted the session, awareness on the scams. I think that this comes pretty pretty much in their purview as well. So I think we should follow-up with the TICC committee.

So the recommendation will be how do we do a joint session between the two commissions to say, okay, what do what can we do together to help the residents? Or one of us goes to a tip commission as a guest and then Mhmm. Ask them, I mean, what can we do with that commission rather than trying to do it on our own? Because they are the ones who

are more qualified for it.

Alright. I think, like like you said, I think let's keep it two strings. Right? One is once they say it's possible, drop the commission recommendation to city council for funding and staff support for, like, pushing this information, like a campaign or whatever that quarterly seminar or something. Then we also collaborate with the SCC to see what is I

guess it's not clear to me, like, what exactly the output of collaborating to Tick would be. Like, I'm making some assumptions here, but, like, I feel like there's a strong likelihood that the output of that would just be, like, oh, yeah. We should, like, put stuff on seed and the existing city resources. Right? Like, what tools or

resources you know, that I I forgot exact session, but it is all about whatever we are talking about. It's all related to scams and how to fraud prevention and how to increase the awareness, especially to seniors. It's all of us covered in there, one of the session. It happened, I think, December or or maybe November. September or sometime. Okay. Oh, nice.

Yeah. Something like that.

Yeah. Something like that. It's a it's a similar area. It was like a in

person It was an in person

event.