Public Safety Commission - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call to order the regular meeting of the Cupertino Divestment Council. Today is Tuesday, June 30th, 2026, and time is 1.01 p.m. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the Let's conduct the roll call thing.

Disaster Council Member Fard.

Here.

Disaster Council Member Connolly.

Here.

Disaster Council Member Mosley.

Here.

Disaster Council Member Sander. Here. Disaster Council Member Yu.

Here.

Disaster Council Member Wu.

Here.

Vice Chair Moore. Present. Chair Kapoor.

Present. Thank you. I appreciate everyone taking the time to be here today. As we know, preparing for emergencies is definitely a team effort, and today's meeting is an opportunity to share updates, to discuss our priorities, and continue the work to keep the community prepared. I'd also like to take a moment to introduce our new emergency coordinator, Justin Lin, who's here attending as a member of the public today. His first official day is July 15th. Thank you, Justin. We look forward to working with you and when you are officially part of the team. And this is a great update for me to be able to share today because we will have someone full-time in the city to bring the expertise and leadership for our emergency management program. So if you get a chance after the meeting, please introduce yourself and say hello, but you will be on board July 15th. I'd also like to briefly explain how the Disaster Council differs from the Public Safety Commission because that was a question that came up recently. So the Disaster Council consists of city leadership and representatives from emergency response organizations and serves as the city's coordinating body for emergency management and disaster preparedness. The Public Safety Commission, on the other hand, is a volunteer advisory commission made up of residents appointed by the City Council that reviews the Public Safety Act. With that, I'm going to take us into the first item on the agenda, which is approval of November 17, 2022 Disaster Council meeting minutes with the recommended actions that the body approved in November 17, 2022 Disaster Council meeting minutes. Are there any comments or questions or corrections? Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve the November 17, 2022 Disaster Council Meeting Minutes?

More so moved. Second.

Clerk, would you please conduct a roll call vote?

Disaster Council Member Card?

Yes.

Disaster Council Member Connolly?

Yes.

Disaster Council Member Mosley?

Yes.

Disaster Council Member Sander? Yes. Disaster Council Member Yu?

Yes.

Disaster Council Member Wu?

Aye.

Disaster Council Member Vice Chair Moore. Abstain. Chair Kapoor. Chair Kapoor.

I was not here to do abstain.

You may abstain. You may also vote. I will abstain. The motion carries with Moore and Kapoor abstaining.

Thank you. Our next item is the approval of October 30th, 2025 Disaster Council Meeting Minutes. Are there any comments or corrections? Seeing none. Clerk, let's conduct a roll call, please. Sorry, I need a motion to approve the October 30th, 2025 Disaster Council Meeting Minutes. Thank you.

More so moved. I'll second. And Chair, just to note there, I have not seen any members of the public wishing to comment on the last item or this item. So I will note if I see anyone.

Okay, let's conduct a roll call vote.

Disaster Council Member Card.

Yes.

Disaster Council Member Connolly.

Yes.

Disaster Council Member Mosley.

Yes.

Disaster Council Member Sander. Yes. Disaster Council Member Yu.

Yes.

Disaster Council Member Wu.

Yes.

Vice Chair Moore.

Yes.

Vice Chair, or Chair Kapoor? Yes. The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you, Clerk. Are there any close comments?

No close comments, Chair.

Now we go to oral communication. So this portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the Disaster Council on any matter within its jurisdiction that is not on today's agenda. Clerk, do we have any requests to speak?

Chair, I have no requests to speak personally or in the room.

Okay. We have no old business and we'll move on to new business, which is the presentation of the draft city of Cupertino emergency operation plan policy chapter. The city's currently updating its EOP through a comprehensive planning process with the assistance of an emergency management consultant, Will O'Brien. Today, we will receive a presentation on the draft policy section of the plan and an overview of the project timeline before opening it up for any discussion and feedback. With that, I'd like to welcome Michael Contreras, Emergency Management Consultant with Witt O'Brien.

Thank you. I'll move up to the chair here.

So my name is Michael Contreras. I am with Witt O'Brien Consulting Company. I am the Assistant of the City of Pacino with the development of the new EOP or the revised EOP. Just a little background. I have over 30 years of experience in emergency management. I was the director of emergency operations for L.A. County Public Health for about 14 years. So I have a lot of experience. I also did a lot of this in the Air Force. My colleague, Doug Mayne, who's sitting here with us, he has a lot of experience as well. He's the state of Hawaii emergency management director. So in between ourselves, we're working with the city of Cupertino in developing the new plan for the city. So with that, I want to begin with the presentation here. And so we're gonna talk a little bit about the policy section. So as noted by Ms. Kapoor, the Disaster Council is essentially a policy group that helps to develop policy for emergency management. So the section that really I wanted to kind of go over with the Disaster Council today was emailed to you. It is the policy section of the plan and discusses some of the policies for disaster response. And then talk a little bit about the public comment and city council approval timeline, the timeline that we have for the project, making sure that we're meeting the needs of the disaster council and the city.

Next slide, please.

So first of all, our project, of course, is to revise the City of Cupertino's Emergency Operations Plan, which we've begun in earnest. Right now, our timeline began in February. We're actually running out to October of this year to give Justin an opportunity to take a look at the plan and also comment on the plan. So we wanted to extend that out to October, so we'll be doing that. Our progress to this point is the plan's draft is nearly complete. Yesterday, we had an opportunity to meet with Mr. Toma. from Santa Clara County OEM. We've got a lot of great information about how the county operates and integrates with the city. We also met with Captain Valenzuela from Santa Clara County Sheriff, and he provided us with a lot of great information, his staff, and we're really appreciative of those two organizations for assisting us in this project. Next slide, please. So the first piece we want to talk about is what we call the policy chapter, which is the policy of the city of Cupertino as it applies to emergency management. You notice that we have residents up here. I don't know if you all have taken a look at the copy that was distributed to you. If not, can you bring it up, the policy section?

Thank you. Let's see.

It was an attachment to the...

I can open it, but I'll lose this presentation. That's fine.

Yeah, that's fine. Well, just going to use that as the back.

Slight delay.

Yeah. So this is an excerpt from the plan. It's for your review and comment. It is a draft, of course, so there's gonna be some changes in language as we anticipate. The first element that we wanna talk about, this is residents of Cupertino, the first thing. I think that one of the things that we've heard from Ms. Kapoor, Ms. Squashia, and the folks here in the city is the importance of making sure that the focus is on the residents of the city of Cupertino. So the first comment in here is about the residents of Cupertino. We wanna make sure that we're emphasizing this plan, The emergency management organization, the structure, the responses, the recovery elements, anything that has to do with emergency management is focused on the residents. That's something that was very clear to us from the very beginning of the project, and we want to make sure we emphasize that. It's a very strong thing that we see here at Cupertino from a consulting standpoint. These are the key priorities, the protection of life, protection of property, safeguarding the environment of the city, safeguarding the economy of the city. There is one language change that we'll be including here, and that is to include for the residents that they should be prepared to have 72 hours of being self-sufficient before the emergency operations can begin. So we're going to be adding that language to this policy element. You'll see that for the residents. That's going to come up. We talk about the role of the city council, the elected officials, elected representatives of the residents of the city. I think the biggest piece here is that last comment, the last words here in this paragraph.

They advocate for the residents of the city.

So as they're reviewing emergency management structures and policies and organizations, their role is to really take a look and think about it from the residents of the city perspective and advocate for those residents.

Next, let's scroll down a little bit.

We have developed a new element within the plan. It is the senior policy group, which is comprised, as you can see here. We'll show you a quick graphic on that. Senior policy group during an activation will providing guidance and coordinate or oversight of the responses. And they really are the senior leaders of the city during an activation of the plan. There's more response. There's more detail on that in Section 6 response, but we wanted to make sure that you had an opportunity to see this. And again, anytime you have a comment on any of these things, a question, please feel free to let me know. The Disaster Council, we kind of added the Disaster Council in here, and basically we just essentially went off of what the Cupertino Code is and California Code. Keep it going down, please. Though there is, oh yeah, right here, here's the role. There is one change that was recommended this morning in our meetings with folks, and that is regarding that third sentence, the approving body for policies, the change is going to be that the Disaster Council will review and recommend policies. So that's gonna be one of the changes in the language.

Any comment or question on any of that?

No? Okay, we keep coming down. Here's the members of the Cupertino Disaster Council. As we know, we already, we know who these folks are. And we also have the disaster may include representatives of civic, business, labor, veterans, essential, essentially this is taken straight out of your code. Okay, and we also recognize the role of the city attorney in this. Okay, I can keep coming down, please. Senior leader intent, this language is going to be changed to city manager's intent. So this is Tina's intent for the plan. Establish policies, city of Cupertino, have the emergency management program, which will do these things. We'll change this language so it's more relevant to the context of the title change. This here is, I call this senior leader's prerogative, but it's city manager's prerogative. One of the things that we brought up with Ms. Kapoor is that a lot of times when you're in the middle of an operation, you have to make decisions based on what's going on. There could be changes that need to be made that are outside the plan. You need to make a change to the plan on the fly. So the senior leader always has a prerogative to be able to do so. We want to make sure we include that in the plan so it's clear to everybody. that that prerogative exists. We can deviate from the plan. And then the next elements are just, these were taken straight out of your general plan, and these are all the various emergency management policies that pertain, and I'm not going to go too much over those, but you can take a look at those in your general plan, and you can also see them in the extras that you have there. And anywhere within the context of the Emergency Operations Plan, where we've written a chapter, you will see us relating back to a policy. We will always link back to one of your policies. And that's essentially, please go down to the bottom there, Kirsten, thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah, keep going. So these are the policies of the city. We talk about legislation that govern the emergency management program. And then we go into the roles and responsibilities of the Office of Emergency Management. So these are the things that Justin will be implementing or be responsible for as he activates his or begins to operate his office.

Okay, please keep coming down.

And that's it.

Yeah.

Okay. So that's essentially the policy chapter of the plan. That's the opening chapter of the plan that really sets the tone and the standard for the plan. Is there any comments or questions that we have in the Disaster Council? Any changes that are recommended?

Thank you, Michael. Any questions or comments from Disaster Council on the presentation? Okay.

Let's look at policy number HS 2.2, promote emergency preparedness. We do a great job with the CERT training, but it does say information will be provided through CPR and first aid and CERT training, but we seem to be a little light on the CPR and first aid. I know staff has that, but for members of the public, I'm not sure we're meeting that. And I don't know if we do have the publication of monthly safety articles in the Cupertino scene. Maybe we do. I'm not really sure. And also it mentions the city's emergency preparedness website. I know we have a lot of pages on our website. website. I don't know if that is meeting that requirement and then video and printed because I haven't seen this before. I haven't looked at it carefully. Video and printed information at the library. I don't know what that would be or if this was part of your work to kind of audit if this is being done at this time. So I'm curious about that.

Yeah, so I believe that anything you see where it's in the policy section that was cut from HS2, that's out of the general plan.

Right.

I believe. So we do have a section within the context of the plan called community preparedness, where we address some of the elements that need to be accomplished to be able to meet that policy. And some of those things that we just had the conversation this morning was about things like CPR training and CERT training and who has a responsibility to carry those out. Those are the kind of things that we've discussed community preparedness. And also that element of communications is also discussed in that, how we go about communicating, how you would go about communicating. with your residents regarding community preparedness. There was some discussion on that. We'll have, when you see the final, or not the final, but you'll see a draft plan, you go to community preparedness, you'll see a lot of those annotations. A lot of that stuff is going to be in conjunction with the county. One of the key elements of this plan was to make sure you were aligned with Santa Clara County to the maximum extent possible. It makes it a lot easier for everybody if you're all singing from the same sheet of music.

Okay. Now, going back to the Rule 4.2, you made a change. I believe you said the approving body was that the Disaster Council would make recommendations.

Review and recommend policies, plans, and procedures. Yes, ma'am. To the Council. The Council would be able to review plans, policies, or procedures.

Okay.

And then make recommendations on that.

Okay. So I did... through the use of AI, do some comparisons between Cupertino and how other cities do things. So some, the council's really hands-off entirely, and then we have my role on the council, and then things come to the whole council for approval. So there is quite a variety of processes that these are using which is kind of interesting, but I'm wondering if there is some. Something that needs to be changed over the last sentence for 4.2 the disaster Council will be the approving body for policies mutual aid agreements and community preparedness initiatives that seems almost to conflict with what you I think we had that conversation this morning with Mister poor and I think we're going to do that language is being changed over to the city manager's office. Okay, so that would be the... Yeah, that's another change.

And again, I would offer that. I know that there's a lot of ways that different communities use their disaster council. It really is up to Cupertino on how you feel about... I will make the comment that one of the things I do note with this city is a lot of strong community engagement, strong residents. focus on the residents. So how you want to operate that is up to you. Our role is to capture it, put it in the plan for you, and make sure that it's something that Justin can work on getting implemented.

Okay, because that seems to be internally conflicted between the statement that we have here, so that the Disaster Council will be the approving body for policies, mutual aid agreements, and community preparedness initiatives, and you're saying that that's going to move to the city managers. So that takes that role from the disaster council away. And then it also says the approving body is that the disaster council makes recommendations, but that's no longer gonna be true if you're moving it to the city manager's office. So will all of these potential changes be going to the city council as a whole to have a conversation about? because it is my preference that the city council be made aware of this because the way it's written now, that there can be policies, mutual aid agreements, and community preparedness initiatives that are done that the council has no awareness of because that approval would be done through the manager's office. And that's not very transparent.

Yeah, I believe it's totally, however you want to operate in Cupertino, if you believe the city council has that role, then that's a discussion the Disaster Council needs to have. And whatever language you feel like needs to go in there, we're happy to make those changes for you. We want to reflect your practice.

Right. So, yeah, I think if there's going to be policies that are made, so council's supposed to be involved with policies. If there's going to be policies made that are going to affect the residents that could be different from what we're doing presently, then the council should know about it. So, yeah. So I think these changes I would expect would all be highlighted when this goes to the city council. And is this going to have another stop at this, at the council, the disaster council first? Okay. And then it'll go to the council.

Yeah. So today we're only talking about the policy section because we wanted to kind of, the policy section really sets the standard or the base for the plan. And then from there, we'll dig into the operational components. But if you, and I think it's important that, you know, there's any other comment about that does anybody feel any differently about the role that the that you're bringing up and I mean I'm bringing this kind of up to the disaster Council because I kind of feel like you guys are telling us.

Well for this with regards to for policies if I take it to an extreme. You say you have policy that the wealthiest in Cupertino are going to be attended to first and we're going to make that policy through the city manager's office and the city council doesn't have any awareness of it because that's allowed to be done at that level. So I'm gonna give you the most extreme, as an example of be careful with taking away your ability to have insight as from the council into policy changes.

And I'll defer.

Yeah, and I think one of the discussion points, which is we wanted to bring here is the policy, that's written in the disaster council is the intention is only activates when there's an emergency. So in an emergency situation, do we want to give the city manager the authority to to either tweak or take action without having to go to council to approve if any changes needed. So that's kind of one thing to keep in mind that we could board it. So it's clear about the intention, but it's not too circumvent or short circuit the council's policymaking, right? So that's something to think about for this body.

Yeah, I think that making sure that this gets to the council, it would be good. And I don't know if there are policies about equity and, you know, This is the first that crossed my mind was seeing this, like, well, what's the worst that could happen? And I do see that the other cities, some of them completely defer everything off, like Santa Clara, it seems like that's what they're doing there, to the emergency management office entirely. So, yeah, so as long as this gets to the council so that we're aware of it. Yeah. And that issue of equity and all that, if that's buried in some policy that we already have, then I think that addresses it perfectly. And it is not council's intention to get in the way of disaster management at all. It's just a... I understand my fear about that.

So this policy document is part of the overall EOP, which we're, you know, that's why we're focusing mostly on the policy document here to bring additional eyes on this. We would do the same thing if we go to the next meeting of disaster council and then the entire EOP goes again to the full council.

There's an interesting intersection between the council makes policy, but here's an area where It's going to be a little bit different. Yes.

And I do want to add that within the context of the plan, we do have, we developed a feedback loop where residents would be able to feedback to the council during an emergency. So the residents were actually feeding back in, they're giving feedback on their response itself to the council members who in turn through the senior policy group would be able to influence the guidance that's going to the Emergency Operations Center. That's how we built that in there as well. I wanted to kind of make sure that you were aware of that.

Okay, that's good. Yeah, I've got a sister-in-law in Houston, and some of the way they dealt with their levies looked like they were protecting certain properties.

Yes, yes. And I think that was one of the key reasons why we put that comment about the advocate for the residents. We want to make sure we give the residents an opportunity, an avenue, if you will, is that as the response is going on, they have a voice still, regardless of that there's an incident, but they still have a voice. Okay, good.

Any other questions or comments on the presentation?

Chair, we did have a timeline in the presentation that we may want to share.

Yeah, go back to the presentation. We did want to cover the timeline for the plan. completion of the plan, completion of the project. And so this is the general timeline. We're hoping to have a draft completed by 14 July. Kismet or fate or PURPOSEFUL PLANNING. THE NEXT DAY JUSTIN STARTS. THAT'S THE REASON WHY. WE WANT TO HAVE THAT DRAFT COMPLETED FOR HIM BY THE 14th SO WE CAN GET HIS COMMENTS AND START INCLUDING THEM. REVIEW AND EDITING BY 30 JULY. I KNOW THAT YOU'RE HERE AS A MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC BUT WE'RE JUST GOING TO SAY THE USC PERSON, WE'RE KIND OF LOOKING FOR THEM TO GIVE US SOME COMMENTS BACK ON 30 JULY. AND THEN WE WILL REVIEW THE PLAN WITH THE PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISSION SOME TIME AFTER THAT. And then we will come back to the disaster council with the final draft version that they'll be able to make comment on and recommend for approval by council. And then we'll be forwarding to city council for review and approval after we're complete with that portion. Okay, I think that's the last slide. Any final thoughts or questions, sir?

Yeah, following up on Mayor Moore's questions, I mean, I think part of the issue as I'm looking through this is to interplay between plans and policies, because I think it is appropriate for, you know, the council to weigh in on policies and part of the plans that will be part of those policies. So it's sort of a chicken and egg sort of question here. Yeah, it is. But in all events, there's going to be development of a plan that will incorporate some policies to come back to this body. And then after we fine tune it, it will go to the council for further input.

Yes, sir.

And then once that's done, then as it's done with the council now, then it's delegated to the city manager to implement those, certainly in the event of an emergency. That's just the flow of the process. And obviously this makes sense here, just given the makeup of this body, it's all the department heads, that's what typically is done anyway. So I think that's a good point you raised. But for me, it's just sinking into the weeds of what the plan actually will say.

And you are correct, sir. A lot of times when you write plans, there are things that are written into the plan that end up becoming policy, if you will. And so there's like a, it's a fine meshing of the two.

And this document, you say review and comment, are you expecting further review from this in writing to you?

Yeah, if you don't mind. We were going to ask the questions here today. I know my colleague is capturing the information. But if you have additional comments or questions, please feel free to email me back with anything that you have on that document.

Is there a time frame which you want those?

I would say mid-July, about the time that the new ESC comes on board. I'm going to say that one.

Thank you, Michael. I would now like to open the public comment period. Do we have any requests to speak?

Chair, I see no requests virtually or in the room.

Thank you. This item was only for discussion and feedback.

Thank you so much for your time and attention. Thank you.

Okay, we move on. Our next item is the Santa Clara County Office of Emergency Management Report. I'd like to welcome Louie Poma, Senior Emergency Manager with the Santa Clara County Office of Emergency.

Thank you. Pleasure to be here today, and definitely want to congratulate Cupertino on filling the ESC role. I know the individual you picked, I've The two counties have worked with each other for years and I think you guys made a great pick. So happy to, you know, rising tide lifts all ships. So happy that his success will be your success and vice versa. And it'll help us in the county as well. So thank you. So just real quick, I think it's been a little bit of time since we've been able to attend to this degree, so I wanted to just give you a quick layout of our office. This is how we're set up, and our planning and training and exercise team are going to be combined into one team. This is just for better efficiency, a more holistic approach. We found that... You write plans you want to train and exercise them if the two teams are nobody really works in a silo in our office, but we find that if they're more synergistic we were able to have more success and more involvement so other than that it's it's pretty much how we're set up. Next slide please. So I wanted to also share that just a few months ago we became EMAP certified. This is, I don't know if anybody's heard of Certified Emergency Manager, but just as you can become a CEM, a Certified Emergency Manager, Emergency management offices can also be certified. We would be the third in the state of California, not counting the state of California themselves. And we are the first emergency management office in Northern California to be EMAP certified. So, you know, we're obviously very proud of this accomplishment. It's one that we have to continue to work towards. So it's not easy. And it was definitely time-constraining, but... letting you know that it allows us to be able to have a little more validity when we're supporting you in any kind of disaster. So sharing that. Next slide, please. Thank you. I won't spend too much time on this because it's not really affecting the city of Cupertino, but one of our successes is that it's not really affecting the city of Cupertino. What our vision was was that the cities, jurisdictions, communities we serve that don't know that there's a soccer game going on in their area don't have to. We wanted to make sure our communities were safe and served and supported. And we're hoping for the most boring outside of the stadium world cup, uh, you know, what we've ever had and we'll ever have and continue in that capacity. So while it has been a great opportunity to engage a lot of partners, like our sheriff's department, that's here, um, and to have, uh, opportunities to advance ourselves in this kind of, uh, emergency management response. In fact, um, As I'm talking about good practitioners, Marta from your city also came and joined us on one of the activations so she could learn and bring stuff home. So it's been a good opportunity all around and I'm glad it has not bothered our CERF community here in Cupertino. Next slide, please. One thing I do want to talk about, so this is our situational awareness tool, our common operating picture tool. I don't know if anybody in the room has heard of WebEOC. That was our previous tool. So what this tool does is, so it was first framed as kind of an online emergency operations center. How we utilize it is in a number of ways in order to reach our jurisdictional partners when a crisis happens. for resource requesting, if there's needs, for situational awareness, also if there's needs, but for us to posture to best support, and a myriad of other ways. Our EMS partners and public health partners use it for bed count, and I could have a whole conversation about it and would be happy to if anybody wants to offline. We had a product, WebEOC, that lasted several, well, actually I think it started in 2008, We were never fully happy with it, but it's kind of what everybody has been using. During COVID, we had a lot of resource requests for masks, PPEs, you know, needs from you, our partners. And that system did not do what it needed to do. We really had to have backups. We had It didn't work out the way we wanted to serve. Now, granted, that was a large and perhaps hyperbolic example. But at the end of the day, we want to know if something, a disaster happens, we can support our communities, Cupertino being one. So the county, despite, you know, budget cuts and everything's going on, we made sure that we purchased it and purchased it for every member of the Santa Clara County operational area. So city of Cupertino has their own account. It is paid for by the county, not by the city of Cupertino. And we want to make sure that the city of Cupertino, if they have resource request needs, if they want to give us situational awareness because they need support and we don't know what's happening, this is the tool they're going to use. And we're providing and have provided resources. on-site training, and that's always an option more so. So that is one of the counties give to the city, and it's really a give back to us. It kind of helps everybody all around. So, you know, and it creates really a more holistic approach to response. And we're not the only ones that are utilizing this product. Alameda County has moved. San Mateo County has moved. I want to say another one in our region, but the aim is to know that all our other county partners are using it. So if we ever have to go support or they come and support us, everybody's on the same page when they get in front of a computer screen or whatever it may be. Thank you. Next slide. So as already mentioned, and I won't go too far into it, but I've been working, we've got the opportunity to meet your great team yesterday and work on the emergency operations plan. We created an operational area jurisdictional model of kind of what we wanted to see, and it was great that your representatives with uh with o'brien we're utilizing that as a resource so we can all be on the same page um you know i know it came up uh just a moment ago and i actually wanted to double check yeah right um about equity and you know we did go over the afn portion of the plan yesterday they They showed it to me and we discussed and the state of California specifically, and forgive me, I think it was January 2021st assembly bill 1638 and 2231 were passed and they focus on whole community approach, FN equity, those kind of things. And. Not that any of us are against this, but we don't have a choice, even if we were. That has to be legally mandated in your emergency operations plan. From it, but also the way it's written, you know, it has to, you know, the the font, the color, all those things. So, and the Cupertino emergency management team and contractors were, you know, that was their vision as well. So it was a successful endeavor. We spent a lot of time yesterday just working things back and forth to ensure synergy between the city and the county. And although it was a lot of time spent, it was good time spent. Everybody was on the same page. That's always good to say, you know, I didn't want to leave that meeting and go to my leadership and go, I don't know what Cupertino is doing over there. We might need to have a talk. So it sounds like it's on the same page and we can't wait to see the finished product. Next slide, please. Thank you. Wanted to bring up another document that we've kind of been on a product hiatus since, uh, FIFA started, but something we intentionally slid in right before, just in case, heaven forbid, something were to happen is our new recovery operations plan. Um, it's kind of, uh, in the past, such documents have been annexes to our emergency operations plan, but we felt that this was more of a standalone document. And our, our vision here is obviously lessons learned from every, uh, disaster that we've faced over, uh, you know, well, since the beginning of the office. But, you know, in 2020 specifically, COVID wasn't it. You know, we had the SCU complex fire. We had, you know, a number of other things. Santa Cruz area had their complex fire in which we had to support them. And so we took lessons learned from those opportunities And from our deployments, you know, I went out to the Tubbs fire paradise, you know, a lot of fires within, you know, our state region and taking those lessons and implementing them. And we hope that this plan kind of serves in the same way that the EOP jurisdictional model did. and continues to and that it will provide our serve communities like Cupertino the opportunity to utilize pieces from it to speak to you know restoring essential services addressing economic situations physical infrastructure and a lot more so that definitely want to make that known to to the council here today. Next slide please. I just would not be doing my job if I didn't mention alert SEC because it's very important to us and it is another product that the, the county Everbridge is the back end provides to the city because it's important that all everybody is either prepared or aware when a disaster strikes. Just like, you know, County Fire provides genesis for, well, all our surf communities, we find it important to have that synergy between AlertSEC and Genesis, because despite, unfortunately, the costs that we all deal with these days, there's priorities when it comes to serving our communities and Genesis, Alert SCC, and of course, VOC, which we showed, are definitely in the lead of those priorities. Next slide. And I think that's pretty much it for me. I also have my business card if anybody wants my contact information. Any questions, you know, today or offline, feel free to reach out. And I just want to thank you for your time.

Thank you, Lloyd. I will now open it up for any questions or comments.

The recovery operations plan, is it just generally for any kind of disaster or is it custom? I know fire is top of mind now, but, you know, right behind a earthquake, right? And that probably depends on different other considerations for recovery.

Yeah, we've learned that... And if you go to our site, you'll see a lot of hazard-specific documents. But we've learned that making things hazard-specific, if you don't need to, sometimes is more of a hindrance than a help. Because at the end of the day, and we're not talking about a recovery plan where you have a small house fire, that family would be affected, right? But you're not calling in. for all these processes and bureaucracies we're talking the state comes in FEMA comes in what did they do how do you deal with them how can you be supported and how you know can you best communicate with them to get you know the best things out of it now thankfully in those cases that I gave you the county intervenes anyways based on you know state law SEMS the California Emergency Services Act it's incumbent on us to be that intermediary, not as a speed bump, but as a go between to make sure your interests are taken care of. But on the flip side of that, you also have to know the things to take care of yourself. And it's ideal if those are documented ahead of time as opposed to figuring them out in time. You know, debris removal is huge. And we're actually going to do an appendix or an annex to this plan for debris removal because these little things may cost money. the jurisdiction so much money. You know, it's funny when you watch the news, you always see FEMA giving this nice check because this community was so hurt. You don't see, they don't put it on the news when FEMA takes the money back with interest. You know what I mean? And then that county is more, or excuse me, that jurisdiction is more harmed than helped. So it's those little nuances that maybe if they're taking care of ahead of time. And it was a few years ago where there was a tabletop exercise done by the city of Cupertino. And I kind of had this conversation with the members of finance that were assigned to the EOC. And they got scared, but in the best way. The questions started pouring in. I was contacted afterwards. They were looking, you could tell they were looking at city processes and protocols to make sure that they're not in those situations. So a plan like this, I'm hoping is beneficial to not only us serving the unincorporated county, but also parts of the county, but also work as a model for all the cities in the county.

If I understood correctly from the prior presentation, residents should be prepared to be self-sufficient for 72 hours. Who is responsible for teaching them what they need to have, how much water, etc.? Having taken the CERT program, we were actually recommended to have a little bit more than that with regard to water supply, but is that

Who's to train them? So ultimately, it's incumbent on them as members of our society to know how to take care of yourselves, right? But we are all in this room because we want to serve our communities, and this is why we have the jobs we have. So, Gracie, I don't want to misspeak. I mean, CERT, I think, is the best way for those members to engage and learn that way. Is that a fair statement?

Yes, and I can provide that information in my presentation since I'm next.

Yeah, and, you know, we have outreach events, Cupertino OEM does, County Fire does, OEM does, where we literally share, like, I think the best message I ever saw, and we actually stole it from FEMA, was the message that, you know, people see, hey, have your bag, right, and your water and all that, and they think it's a huge thing that I have to do all at once. And they kind of have a campaign where it's an – I don't remember the actual tagline, but it was one day at a time. And that kind of... What's that?

Do one thing.

There you go. See, that's why she's the smart one. And it promotes that way of engaging. And it doesn't make it... You know, I always like the statement, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So it kind of reminds me of that. So... While it is incumbent on all of us as citizens of wherever we live to look after ourselves, a lot of, especially the Cupertino community, which is awesome for us, it makes our life easier. When you have the different fairs, it's so well attended. And I actually am both happy and a little annoyed when I'm like, have you heard of AlertSEC? Oh, yeah, here it is. It's like, oh, awesome. But it's like, why am I here then? But that's what's so great is the Cupertino community is so engaged that thankfully they know about this stuff and they look for this stuff. And if it's available to them. which county fire and county OEM go out of our way to make sure it is, that's the best way we can think of to do so. I know I was on my soapbox for a little bit, so I don't know if I actually answered your question.

Oh, it's good. I was just kind of thinking that with regards to the 72 hours, if there is some sort of video which shows that this individual prepped for that could happen with the broken glass and all this, and here's what happened, and this person didn't do anything, and then Here's what happened.

Well, ready.gov has a lot of tools, and I'm ready.gov, and I'm sure I'm going to be misspeaking and stepping on Gracie's toes. I'm sure there's a lot of resources that.

Website.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably should have recommended our website.

Because the visual is really helpful to see that.

Yeah, yeah.

That was nice working with you. Yes. So I have in the past seen a Stevens Creek Reservoir dam failure plan.

Okay.

Is that something that would be residing on your website somewhere?

No, that would be more with Valley Water. However, it's a federal requirement that all dam owners have to make the county aware of those documents and ensure that we're signed off, that we're in agreement. So we have copies of those documents, but that's specific to Valley Water as it is their state and federal responsibility.

So maybe, I don't know where this question resides, might be a future agenda item, but I think this council should look at this failure plan once in a while just to see that everything's okay, what the plan is.

Well, they also have their own very robust Office of Emergency Management. So either, I mean, you can invite somebody here or also I'm sure if you just reached out to their duty officer and they could get it to the right people and get an answer to you sooner. They might say, hey, do you mind if we come over and present? Or they might say, oh, please see, you know, they might already have something, boilerplate to speak to it.

I had asked them, and they said that dam's in pretty good shape. It's not like the Anderson one.

Yeah, that's a very unique situation over there down in South County.

And if I could interrupt, we do have on our website the dam inundation plan, and that was reviewed by City Council back in 2012. So a while ago, but that plan was approved by City Council.

Okay, great. I'm just going to ignore everybody's website today.

Sorry. So maybe it's time for it to come back.

Any other questions? I have a quick question. Please, we developed our in house little flyers for alert as to see because we want to continue residents to be aware and be signed up. Are there any materials that the county may already have to use?

You know, when we do our public outreach, we bring different materials. So I'll get you my card. I mean, I'm sure, you know, and I can put you in touch with our senior comms officer and our comms officer. And I'm sure they can provide because we have a lot of stuff at the table, you know, and it's all beneficial. So, you know.

There are a stack of the county provided alert SEC cards at Community Hall, City Hall, and the library. I believe also at Quinlan Community Center.

And County Fire also has a lot of stuff, too, that I'm sure Gracie will talk about. Yes. But and you're talking outside of alert SEC. So, yes, on county fire and on us. And I think county fires probably got it pretty well covered. But I can still put you in touch with our senior comms officer to see if anything's not redundant versus superfluous. Right. We'd rather be more prepared than less prepared.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. With nothing else or no other questions, we will move on to public comment. Clerk, do we have any requests to speak?

Chair, I see none.

Okay. Our next item is Santa Clara County Fire Department's report on community education. I'd like to welcome Gracie Hernandez, Senior Community Risk Specialist with the Santa Clara County Fire Department. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Gracie and I work in Community Education and Risk Reduction Services. I will leave a few business cards here for anyone that would like to be in contact with me. My update is about the classes that we are offering to all our cities. Specifically, we do have a wildfire preparedness workshop. They'll be here in Cupertino at Community Hall. on July 15th. So this is something that I want to make sure that you are aware that this is happening in our community here. And we do have flyers available for everybody with alert SEC on the back for all the residents. And I can also bring back any more handouts if you need more of any of these. So we have the wildfire preparedness workshops. We offered them in most of our cities. And we also have the SIRT Academy, which I'm really happy to hear. So you guys, oh, wow. Look at that. I'm so sorry. I'm happy to hear that people are familiar with the program. There are many different, you know, situations that we encounter where people are like, what is CERT? And I do see our CERT graduates. We have some back here behind me as well. So we do offer this class. The next one will be in August, and this will be in the city of Saratoga. Now, for this year, we had to condense down our schedule due to staffing. We did hire one community risk specialist. That person will be in our office, hopefully, because they are still going through backgrounds. They should be starting in August and will be opening a second position. So that is good news that we will have more staffing to provide more classes. Another class that we're offering is the hands-only CPR. And Mayor, I know that you were talking about this class. We are offering it on July 22nd and September 23rd at our headquarters. But we are more than happy to come to the city of Cupertino and provide this class. And if somebody would be the point of contact that you can let me know, we can go ahead and schedule something sooner for you. Also, we have our adult safety courses. We have a crime prevention course in home fire safety. We have the fall prevention and wellness resources class. And I have developed a new class called the fire safety and home preparedness. This is letting the residents know how... to learn essential fire safety practices, learning about kitchen and cooking safety, electrical safety and how to operate a fire extinguisher and how to locate their utilities. Because a lot of people we find in classes, they are not really sure how to turn off their utilities if there's an emergency or even a situation that should arise where they need to go ahead and turn off just even the water. for maybe there's a water leak in the home. So we want them to be prepared in every aspect, not just in emergency preparedness. So those are the classes that we are offering for the rest of this year. And we will have our new schedule out in January for 2027. It's amazing that we're already thinking that far in advance, but we always ourselves are prepared in getting our classes ready for our communities. Is there any area you would like me to have these? Or just leave them out? I'll collect them. Okay. That is the end of my report.

Thank you, Gracie. Are there any questions or comments from the disaster council?

I have one comment on the August CERT class that if you have to go to council meetings on Tuesday, this is like the only session that you can attend during the year that you wouldn't have to have absences for so I've been highly recommending it to everyone that's interested in searching because this is the one but I'm glad to hear that something's going to open up Tuesday and Thursday nights during when council's in session becomes impossible so if one day there could be a Monday Wednesday class to see if that makes a difference maybe that would help

Absolutely. If you notice in the schedule, we did reduce it as well. Because what we found is with a three-week schedule, there's always a meeting. There's always something that maybe the community is volunteering for or working late. So what we decided to keep retention in our programs is to condense it down to two weeks. And we find that's been successful. Yes. When you took it, it was three weeks. So I think that, you know, that was a better mix of things because we are also the the classes that they would be missing. They are classes that they can take by watching a video from previous recordings. And we're just omitting the ones that do not have a skill. So it'd be like that. terrorism, for example. Terrorism, we know with certs, they don't have to do anything. They have to make sure that they are safe and stay away from that area. So we are just using that as an option just to watch as a video.

If there's a way for us to be more flexible and make it work for people, then that kind of input would be very valuable. We do want to continue to make it much more accessible and That's because we know that like we learned a lot of lessons from COVID, for example, how we deliver and how that should show up. So we'd be very open to it.

That's the real world situation that these crises are in.

Absolutely.

I think that online option, so if you had like a Monday and then Wednesday, you can just, it would be online. Yeah. Oh, okay. That's like a hybrid model.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you, Gracie. I have a question, too. So regarding your new course on the fire safety, this is clarification. I heard it's primarily focused on kitchen and cooking. We had a question that came up. that asked about safety around electrical outlets. Do you think that's covered through this class too?

Yes, it is. And honestly, so in one of the classes we have the crime prevention and home fire safety, which basically just touches the surface. This other course that I just started is a deeper dive into that. And I'm actually taking a little bit of the CERT curriculum that we learned in fire safety, some of those components like hazmat and things like that, and how to just locate your shutoffs. And those things are really important. And I realize that they're only offered in CERT. We're not offering it as a basic course for all of the community. Because not everyone can take the course because it's so long and they're not able to take it. But this class is an hour, you know, it's a little bit over an hour. So I think we put in a lot of great information for people to walk away and implement these, you know, safety tips for their home and know what to do in emergencies.

And this is an online class or in person?

These are all offered online for the adult safety. At this time, once we have our staff, we'll be able to go back in person. This is just a temporary thing.

To that point, so it was a question about talking about people who had immigrated to the United States and they didn't really know how much electrical cords they could base string on there. And I have to say, it doesn't matter if you're new here or not, I put in air conditioning unit in through the wall kind plugged it in and our box, we had to upgrade yes know at the time, but it was actually arcing and we could have had our house burned down. Yeah. And so that there's like some basic education about your breaker box and what you can put on some of these lines because I'm in a 1960s house.

Oh, yes.

So I didn't know better at the time. But when you saw the lights dim in the house, it's like we got to need some help.

Yes. Well, I'm glad that you're safe. I'm glad that you made that change. And that is a very important example that we see. And also with this class, I added in candle safety because I actually use that surveys that I received. And we had people asking about, you know, what do I do with residents? So these are more of like the apartment managers and property managers. And they're like, we had people using candles. And I was like, wow, people are still using candles. And, you know, a lot of people went to battery operated. So I was like, you know, we need to add that into the course. So every evaluation that I received, even when you took the curriculum, I was able to get information and develop this course. Thank you so much for your time.

I do want to share, thank you, Gracie, that the information for different courses and how to sign up through you guys is actually also in our Parks and Recreation brochure. So we do have a section that says Santa Clara County Fire Department, the different kinds of courses you can take and where to go to sign up for that.

Thank you so much. And yes, we have a great partnership and I really appreciate it. And also I do want to offer that we do go out to special events. And we have a table for all the resources with all of these classes and other information. So please don't forget us. Invite us to your events. We do do a few of them per year, but I know that there might be other events where we can reach a bigger audience to give them the safety information. It's not just about our classes. It's about the resources for them to be safe in their homes. So thank you again for your opportunity and time.

Thanks, Becky. Okay, I will now open the supplementary, do we have any requests to speak on this item?

No chair, no requests.

Okay, our next item is the report Emergency Management Roles and Responsibilities. So emergency management is a shared responsibility, as we know, across city departments and our public safety department. Today's report provides an overview of the roles and responsibilities that support emergency preparedness, response, recovery, and continuity of operations. Members of the Disaster Council will each provide a brief overview of the department's role, followed by reports from our Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office and Santa Clara County Fire Department partners. And with that, we will begin with the City Manager's Office.

Yes. Happy to start off, Chair. So the City Manager's Office leads the City's Emergency Management Program under the direction of our City Manager, The city manager serves as the director of emergency services as well. So this office oversees the emergency planning, training, and exercises, as well as emergency operations center coordination, alerts, notifications, grant application. This is all done through the emergency services division that will be supervised by Justin Lin, our new coordinator. as well as regional coordination and public information. City managers, office divisions also support the City Council and Disaster Council during emergencies, and they will coordinate employee staffing as necessary. Also, through our Economic Development Division business recovery efforts and outreach, as well as overseeing the community preparedness programs, which includes the CARES, which is the radio, volunteers, CERT program, the Medical Reserve Corps, as well as our block leader program supervised by Marta Drown, our outreach coordinator, as well as the neighborhood watch groups, and then Ken Erickson, who is our search coordinator. So these all play an important role in emergencies. I do have, because we received a request for clarification for our communications cadence that goes out regarding emergencies, I do have Samantha Licurto, who is our PIO, to just provide a recap of what types of alerts go out for emergency prep and reminders.

Sure. So over the past year, the Office of Communications has sent out approximately 26 e-notifications through our e-notification GovDelivery system to the public. And those have varied in topic from heat advisories, cold weather advisories, opportunities for trainings. So attending some of these trainings that have been mentioned, the block later newsletter, and just other communications that related to safety, especially during weather events. In general, the Office of Communications provides timely, accurate, and consistent information to the public during emergencies. That's the goal. And we also facilitate media relations. Great. Thank you.

Sam? And Chair, that concludes the City Manager's Office report.

Thank you. We will move, I'll just go down the table here. Tommy will provide an update on Information and Technology Department.

Sure, so the Innovation and Technology Department, primarily we maintain critical communications, geographic information systems, GIS, and information technology infrastructure that support emergency response and continuity of operations. We provide technology support for EOC Emergency Operations Center activations, including network connectivity, cybersecurity, emergency communication systems, situation awareness, dashboards, incident management tools, and restoration of city technology services. So that also includes providing emergency phones during activations, making sure the various resources, dashboards are up, and there are various related communication tools. So part of the INT. Thank you, Tommy.

Sure. And we heard earlier city attorney's office provides and serves an advisory capacity for disaster council. So I'm going to move to Public Works. Chad, please provide us an update.

Not a problem. Public Works leads infrastructure assessment, emergency engineering, debris management, transportation coordination, road closures, traffic control and barricade deployments, utility coordination, facility support, and restoration of critical infrastructure. We oversee engineering support for emergency response operations. We coordinate with partner agencies and utility providers. And we support comprehensive damage assessments, infrastructure recovery, and post-disaster restoration efforts to help ensure the continuity and essential public services.

Thank you, Jack. Thanks for the information.

Yeah, your Parks and Recreation Department's role is mostly care and shelter. So our team supports community sheltering, evacuation support of facilities, our reunification sites, our recreation facility operations, volunteer support, community recovery services, and assist with any care and support services for affected residents. Okay.

Community development, which primarily in the event of an emergency would be the city's planning and building divisions would support hazard mitigations and perform damage assessments, something our building division regularly does with structures. Our department also is primarily involved with permitting and the environmental review process. So we'd be focused on looking at recovery permitting, rebuilding efforts. And in terms of post-disaster, we'd be looking at land use, housing, and development issues in terms of expediting any permits or any things to help expedite the emergency.

And that's essentially it for us.

A financial comment?

So the Finance Department largely supports emergency purchasing, contracting, and cost tracking. Of course, when there's a disaster reimbursement documentation, it has to be followed, and grant administration, tracking payroll, continuity to make sure our employees are being paid. You know, we're maintaining a lot of those records with regard to our recovery efforts so that in the event that we're looking for reimbursement from the state and federal governments, we can acquire those things.

Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office.

One. Thank our insurance office in charge of protection of property. And with all stakeholders will be in charge of evacuation evacuation zones notices evacuation assistance exit routes and you read these locations. Additionally will safeguard any vacant property as far as it seems for employees. Also we are Here to help our public with public information and connection with stakeholders and assist our partners in any support services needed.

Thank you, Captain. Santa Clara County Fire Department.

Santa Clara County Fire Department is an all-risk fire agency. We exist to protect lives, property, and the environment from fires, emergency incidents, and disasters through preparedness, prevention, education, and emergency response. We work in collaboration with our response partners. That would be law enforcement, governmental leadership, emergency managers, and volunteer organizations. We participate and support through all phases of the disaster response that would include prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Our daily 24-hour emergency response staffing consists of 79 firefighters and officers, 19 fire stations with 38 frontline apparatus and four command vehicles. We're governed by the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, and the fire chief serves as the county's fire marshal and also provides management oversight for the county's office of emergency management and 911 communication centers.

And I do want to give Michael a moment to see if he wants to add anything in terms of what the city attorney duties are in the democracy.

Yeah, thank you. I mean, Tina's correct. Roe is mostly advisory to the city manager and to the council in terms of emergency. But separate from that, in the event the AOC is activated, we also provide procurement, contracting, including mutual aid advice for agreements. And on top of that, most importantly, working with FEMA because the cost recovery aspect is significant as well.

Thank you. Are there any questions or comments from the Disaster Council on this item?

A little bit. Looking at the municipal code with 2.40.090 mutual aid, and this might get into the first presentation that we had with regards to our policies. So it does say there it's the purpose of the city council enacting the ordinance codified herein to facilitate the rendering of mutual aid. The purpose of the city, okay. And for the people of the city, emergency plans adopted and approved by the city council shall provide for the interchange of mutual aid and for coordination with the emergency plans. So I'm kind of wondering, and then reading this section for the city council, it says from the staff report, provides policy oversight of the city's emergency management program, adopts emergency management plans and ordinances. I don't see that this is, codified. So where did this actually, I'm just curious where this came from.

You're looking at the staff report language?

Yeah. Because it sort of conflicts a little bit with the prior one with the policy where I was, you know, or you could put it another way and say it supports my request that policies would go to the council rather than that there could be recommendations that are coming from the disaster council or the manager's office, but it would go to, it would get to the council.

So vice chair that set the section?

Yes, there's that, right. But there's, I don't see a section. It's not, it's not codified what the council's rules exactly, or is it? So I think when the policy packet comes back, that this will clarify all of that.

Go ahead, Doug. So Doug May with Wood O'Brien. Good to see everybody here today. Thank you. Do I need to move up to the chair or is this fine?

It might be helpful for the microphone for those viewers at home.

Again, Doug Main with Wood O'Brien's. The plan should reflect what your code says and what your usage is. And if we have, and there are things that we have in the plan that are flat out wrong. I mean, I'll say that now because we're in the very first drafting stage. So the goal of getting this draft out was to receive comments back and say, well, this isn't how we do it. This is how it really works here. No, we don't do this. We do that. Or, yep, this is right. Or, hey, we didn't think about this, and we should add this to our policies and procedures. So if there are things such as the role of the disaster council is to recommend changes and The role of the city council, for example, it's the city council is the approving authority for everything, for example, because in some locations it is. In other locations, it's the mayor alone if it's a strong executive or they're split and it's laid out how they're split. So as part of the comment period that's coming back to us, we're still in the comment period. We've asked for comments back. So as part of the comments, it's just outlining those things that we have erred on in this initial draft. And then as we work through the process, we will incorporate those. And there's probably at least two more opportunities for clarification to come back as comments. So this is very much the beginning of the sausage making process. And we're just kind of lumping it all in. And, you know, you don't like fennel, so you're going to tell us, well, take that fennel out. And that's what we'll do. So there is still opportunity over the next couple of months. We have, what, four months, I think, until the end of October, if I'm doing my quick math right. So there's there is still opportunity to make sure that we get this as in line with the the the code. Most importantly, you know, most importantly, we need to line up with what the law says, what the code says, and then with how you actually do things. And there might be something might pop up that says, well, maybe we should change the code. You know, maybe this does make more sense to do things this way or to split approvals. You know, the normal approval process works during day-to-day operations, but it might be difficult to get a city council quorum and get the council together to approve certain things during disaster. So we're going to allow the city manager to make certain decisions that then either have to or might not have to be retroactively approved. reviewed and approved by council. Oftentimes there's, you know, money is done that way a lot of times where, you know, they get the approval authority up to so much, and then after that it has to be this, or for the first 72 hours of a disaster, you know, these approvals sit in these places, and then after that, you know, it changes because now we can get the council together and we can do the review process. So our goal with this plan is to provide information best practices, but to make sure that we're not overwhelming the Cupertino, overwhelming Cupertino with officiousness, with needless policies and procedures to strip it down as much as we can. But it has to reflect how you do business and how you want to do business. So that as part of the comment period, what we hope is to get some of that back that says, no, you got this wrong. This is right, but we do it this way. And that'll all come back, and Mike will do a great job of incorporating this. It'll all be Mike's fault. That's the bottom line. So this will come back. We'll put it back into the... the plan, we'll come back for comment. Justin is going to be a key person involved in this moving forward. And as we tweak it, we'll tweak it. And by the time it's ready for approval at the council, it will be exactly what you guys need.

And to your point, Mayor, the code itself, and I'm going to come up here and make a If you feel that the code is unclear or is not providing the clarity that you need, this is also an opportunity to kind of look at those things and decide, determine whether or not there needs to be a clarification or adjustment on that code.

Okay, so will this get to, going back to the timeline, will this get to the council for the council feedback to happen? Because where this... looking for to find inconsistencies coming from is actually more from our land use experience where we've had inconsistencies between our general plan and our zoning. And so we had to kind of get that mindset to basically look for it and then see you know, which one needs to be fixed and can we fix it?

Well, I believe we'll write the plan according to the code that exists. And if you want to make adjustments, there'll be adjustments that will be made post that. You can do it when you do an additional review for the plan again.

If I may add to that, I think we can definitely agendize the draft EOP to go to full council if that's of interest.

Yeah, I don't want to be the only one looking at it because I know there's other council members.

Oh, yeah, most definitively, yes. Most definitively, the rest of the council members have an opportunity to review the point.

The other thing I was going to add to this conversation, and I'll bring this back here, is maybe there's, you know, we've preserved the policymaking function of council, and that's paramount, but give this one a go on it. However, because we are talking emergencies, maybe there's a clarifying sentence or language that in case of a declared emergency, the city manager may make decisions around emergency management and then inform the full council, but not in the moment. I shouldn't be thinking about scheduling the next council meeting and ensuring forum, but that only happens once, because there's an emergency ordinance that we can easily get council or mayor to sign for declaring an emergency, and then that takes place.

Yeah, so just flowing through 2.40.60, right? The city manager who is gonna be the director of emergency services will consult with the city council to declare emergency. If the city council is not available, then within seven days, you will bring it to the city council to ratify declaration of the emergency. But of course, by the time we get there, hopefully all the good work everyone's doing, we will have policies in the plan that the city council has vetted, implemented. So hopefully we'll never have to. But when that situation arises, she will notify the council and boom, everything starts to get executed to respond.

I'm hoping at some point that we, perhaps the council will have a little bit of training on communications when there is a disaster so that we People don't go and say things that upset people or get in the way demanding. So the Cities Association presentation they had a couple weeks ago was very good talking about that. And, you know, you don't go to the fire chief and go demand, let me know what's going on. I'm a council member of Tony. It's like, no, step out of the way. Yeah, so that would also be helpful.

Mayor, if I may, there's actually a course provided by the state specifically for that. It's called Director and Electeds. Gosh, I can't remember the exact title, but I can close the loop and get that over to you because I can be frank. most in those positions don't want to engage that course or don't have the time. So hearing you talk about that is very refreshing. So I would love to see if we can maybe set something up. That would be great.

That would be great. And we also have a portion dedicated to just communications in our EOP, and we'll be doing those trainings for everybody later on what your role is in the emergency, including council, of course.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Okay. I will now open the public comment period on this item.

I see no requests, Chair.

Thank you. Our next item is citizen for report. I'd like to welcome Ben Erickson.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you. All right. It was good to see everybody again. You're all doing well. Let's see. What I wanted to do is share with you what we use as a matrix to measure and monitor what we're doing in the Citizen Corps, which is the affiliated volunteers for the city in the three different branches, and they comprise the Citizen Corps. It's the CERT branch. the Amateur Radio Branch, CARES, and the Medical Reserve Branch. So we have, since we don't have a medical facility within the city, we've developed a way to support the city for medical BLS-level types of support in an event. So this is our summary of what we've done. It's sent out to everybody, but it shows basically how many volunteers. We're over 1,000 volunteers. and how we spend our time. This is for year to date since, you know, through June. It does show all the trainings and activities, exercises, outreach, different types of events. But you also see that we also work outside of the city. So our people are working with the county, different cities for different types of events because if something happens, we're all working together and it's good for us all to know each other before something happens. This is a breakdown. As you know, the city is broken into six reporting zones. And this is the zone number and the number of affiliated volunteers in each one of those. And we had 14 new volunteers come on in this six month period. Okay. And our public education, this is a part of it. I know we'll take a lot of the materials and things that are used and presented, prepared by the fire department and other agencies and that, and incorporate it into how do we use that within Cupertino. So our public education will be the monthly preparedness classes, which would go through a lot of the different things that prepare somebody to take care of themselves, their family, their neighborhood. How did they report their status or get access to resources if they need them? And what's Cupertino do that? How does that work within Cupertino and the resources? So that's what we have for here. One of the things that we do also is community events. Down here we've got, we had 10 requested activations. And we'll go into what activations requested and auto activations are. But this is where we do a lot of the different events. We're going to have our seventh event coming up this Saturday and the big fireworks show. And so we'll support that with each of the viewing sites, a first aid booth, reunification point for lost parents or children or whomever. And that's an opportunity for us to work with the medical support of it, first aid, but also communications back to the command post about what's the status of going at each of the sites, you know, communication going both ways. And then working with our partners, you know, the fire, the sheriff, parks and rec, public works, all of those people are working together. And this is another opportunity for us to be as a team, work and meet each other. And in a real emergency, it's not the first time that we see each other. But we also have a steering committee. It's seven leader volunteers, and we meet every month, and we come up with the different things, how we do our marketing, the outreach, what are the processes and things that we need to review and update, training. We do operate as a department operating center when we're activated, so that's something that we do so that... We manage all of the resources and activities and things that we need to do for the Citizen Corps. So that's what we use to measure and monitor our activities. Okay? And I want to share with or say thank you, everybody, for saying what you share your department and what you do because that is kind of what this is. It fits right into it. But we have a volunteer management annex. And in there, it talks about how and what we do with volunteers, how we manage them, all that type of thing. But this is our capabilities appendix. These are the things that we've gone through and we've got identified our auto-activation procedures and processes like standing orders. These are the things we can do and been authorized to do. And that's what disaster council approves at the beginning of the year are activations. So on the back of each one of our volunteers ID cards, it says auto activation is only when items fall off the shelf. So that's their code to go into activation mode. So these are the different things that we have. If I can get it to go up, maybe a little bigger. So auto activation, these are the things that we're gonna do once something falls off the shelf, okay? And depending on what we need to do, we have all of this pre-laid out so that we can go ahead and do this and we don't have to worry and try to find and get approval for something. Okay, so i'll kind of show you what it does, but, as you can see, we become more of the eyes in the ears in the neighborhood and be able to report the status of what's going on back to the city. If I can, there we go. And then our requested activations, these are the different things that would be like the 4th of July support. We also do a thing which is a specific situation monitoring. This is along with the evacuation things. We do have an element in there that we can keep an eye on specific things and be able to report the status if it's a civic disobedience or if it's a ember watch, you know, as fires are progressing or doing something like that. So we have those types of things. But what I wanted to show is how it rolls out. If something happens, the public is going to start doing what they're going to do. They're going to take care of themselves. And this is our ideal situation. Everybody knows how to take care of themselves, their family, their home, their neighborhood. And we know that the response times for resources is going to be hours to days. And so with that goes on, everybody's gonna start trying to take care of themselves and hopefully we do it safely and we've got enough people trained to do that. When the citizen cores are activated, it starts right at the beginning. We established the supervisory component, which is the DOC, Department Operation Center, to be able to oversee all the activity and make sure that what we do is all coordinated. We will start off an emergency network, which is the amateur radio, to bring that up as we need it. We will start a mic-mic report. This is a modified Mercalli scale that we use to get information from all of our amateur radio people. They bring this up, and it's part of everybody's training in their activation handbooks about what they do and what it means. And anything over a certain number, calls out the severity of it. We're able to get that information back to the city, but also we run that back to the county because that's part of the county protocol is all 15 cities are doing the same thing to give a heads up to the county. We'll all start doing our infrastructure safety assessments throughout the neighborhoods, and we're going to be looking at roads, the critical facilities and things that we've identified, and the neighborhoods, and being able to get the information back, which is basically the safety assessment, the damage assessment information that we use from the FEMA training in CERT. It's talking about injuries, structural, utilities, access, you know, and what we need to know because that's the kind of information, once we get it back to you in the city, you'll know what's going on in the city with what and how if we're going to bring emergency vehicles in, which directions in the neighborhood is going to tell us what's available. We do follow the same activation level as the city and the county activation levels. so that we can support what we need to do. But also, if we need to go into the medical support, either if we're standing up a shelter and we're supplementing the medical support for a shelter, the psychological support for a site or an event, we've gone through the Red Cross training and some different things. So this is... what we would expect to happen in an auto-activation with any spectrum of this, depending on what's needed, okay? And each one of these things that we use, let me give you an idea of how it's set up. If we're gonna set up the emergency net, it says, what is it? So we've shared this with the city, so you know what is it that we're doing? How is it gonna be used by whom? Who does it? What would be the event that triggers it? At what time period? It's an auto activation. What is the insurance coverage for the liability for the residents? The DSWVP program is what we use for the state. And what is the training and what are the specific skills that are needed? So for each one of these programs, capabilities that we do we've got this laid out so it tells us what we need to do how to do it and safely and then at the end of something ever happens we said this is what we've done this is how we protect ourselves and and the. The volunteers so that we can accomplish these different capabilities that we might need over time. Okay. So. If you shared yours. So that's perfect. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ken. Are there any questions or comments from the Possessor Council?

Chair, I just want to note that the handbooks that Ken referenced and the procedures and checklists are all available on the City website on the Citizen Corps page under the Emergency Manager website umbrella.

Thank you. I'm curious how the handbook came about. that you were sharing.

Oh, yeah, we have a number of these that are available. One is the ARC, Citizen Corps ARC Activation Handbook. And this really tells everybody what do you need to do from take care of yourself, take care of your family, take your neighborhood, do your assessment and report. You know, you kind of start off with this and then Because we have people doing their go kits and that type of thing, and we wanted them to put this into their go kit so they know exactly what to do and how to do it. We have the six reporting sites within the city. In this handbook is the top-down view of the site because a lot of our reporting sites aren't necessarily at the street address. They might be on a campus of something at the northeast corner. So it tells you more of the details of what to do and how to get there if you are deployed to one of these sites. So that is our contact information, our activation handbook. We do one for communications because it's kind of key for all of our folks when they do the reporting of their status. We could, and we used to use this quite a bit and rely on it and still use it, but it was where you take and physically go to the reporting site with your report. But we've developed a radio network with GMRS and FRS radio to be able to send that information without physically having to go to a reporting site, which is a lot safer. for everybody. And there's a manual for that, a handbook for that. And then we have one that is for the amateur radio people and how do they get started? What do they need to do from a basic, how do you turn on your radio? A little refresher on how do you pass a message and the frequencies and things that we use within the city.

So did we use a consultant to put this booklet together for its original edition and then you've been updating it or was it fully made in-house?

This is all in-house.

Interesting. Okay. So I did take the whole packet and run it through Cloud AI for comments and said, ours is frankly more detailed and operationally specific than anything I found published by Saratoga, Los Gatos, or Sunnyvale. So kudos.

That could be good or bad, I don't know. We just made it really heavy to pick up.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, just quickly, so just if you could, maybe I missed it, clarify, how does the communication of the auto-activation process and communication of what's happening roll up? How does that get communicated in the event of an auto-activation, whether that's considered a large-scale emergency or small-scale?

Right. Yeah, so let's say if it's an earthquake in that scenario and the criteria is things falling off the shelf, if it falls off the shelf and we've got the whole city, not all areas in the city may be affected. And so what we do with that is we want everybody to, one, turn on the radios at 1670 a.m., So that's the way that we're going to broadcast and we use that in our exercises and training. So everybody's trained to go use that. Also, we're trained to use the Quick Capture app, which we use and we used in the last exercise. We had some 57 different reports or something that came up so that we're getting that information to the city. The other part of it is the communications from the field to the city. That's where our amateur radio group really comes into play. Um, and we have the communications vehicle that we use for 69. So we're kind of the, the custodians of it and, uh, and fleet keeps that all going for us. And it's an amazing vehicle, um, that does a center for all of our communications within the city. And we can, it's mobile. So we can go wherever this, um, command post might be or whatever we need to do. And then, um, So that's how that basic information starts to roll in. Mic reports, those things will start in the first hour, okay? So we'll get that information in the doc and in the communications vehicle in that, and then we need to find a way to share that. OK. And who needs to know it? How do we get it to that person? I'm looking at you, Tina. OK. And if you're on vacation, you know, but that's the thing that we want to be able to get that in. So we look forward to more exercises and things where we work and integrate that together because we've got a lot of information that comes in that you need to know. about how and what we what level we might activate what types of things we need what planning things we need to be working into and um and with our partners too you know with public works because depending on the time and the hour you might have different resources available yeah thank you and my understanding is that the president developing the eop we're meeting with all of these needs to understand

what frequency and where, so we can all be connected, so if you can.

Okay, thank you.

I will now open the public comment period. Flo, do we have any requests to speak?

I see no requests, Chair. Thank you.

And with that, our next item is the Block Leader Coordinator Report. I would like to welcome Marcia Brown, Block Leader Coordinator for this presentation.

Hello. I'm gonna try and keep this short. I know we're coming up on time. My name is Marta Drown. I've been with the city since 2022. Part of the way that I was onboarded was with the understanding that city council wanted to see the block leader program improved, both in terms of strengthening it, but also defining it a little bit better. So the basic idea behind the block leader program originally was how do we get neighbors to recognize each other, to know each other? I kind of joke at onboarding. I don't need block leaders to be best friends with everyone on their street. Just if your car breaks down and evacuation got called, are you comfortable enough with your neighbors to ask for help? With the move to the Office of Emergency Management, there has been a more emergency preparedness focus in the program, and I'll go into that in a little bit. Meetings are held quarterly. Topics are chosen based both on feedback we've received from program participants, but also current initiatives that the city is promoting or is exploring. So every year we have the year end report from the sheriff's office, always very popular. And then about this time last year, we had a presentation on the active transportation plan because we knew that feedback was needed for that. We've also worked with the fire safe Council to give some information specifically there about home hardening and the sustainability department. So you can see, I try and pull from as many sources as possible because I want these meetings and the information given in them to be useful to the residents, not only to block leaders, but also for them to be a point of contact with their neighbors that I don't need them to know the exact building code. I would love if Someone said, oh, I'm planning on completely redoing my house, and thank God I don't need a permit. But a block leader who has been to a presentation given by the building department can say, no. Respectfully, yes, you do need a permit. So I'm not demanding expertise. This is not a full-time job for any of the volunteers. But I do... want to capture the engagement that we already see from some residents and kind of funnel it a little bit better. The volunteer directory is something that came about from volunteer feedback. In the past, there was a map that showed essentially where block leaders lived. And what I heard from block leaders was they were very uncomfortable with having their personal information open to the public like that. So instead, The directory is opt-in and it is only shared within the program. It's actually kept on our volunteer management portal that volunteers have to log in for to really respect the privacy of all of our block leaders, but while still giving them a way to reach out to someone who lives maybe a neighborhood over and say, Hey, I noticed that you're having a 4th of July event. So are we. Let's work together. Or, hey, I noticed that you did a really good job on holding an event. Can I talk to you and learn a bit more? Yeah. Some volunteers have chosen to use the volunteer directory to create a group chat. I'm not involved in that, partially because what we heard from the city attorney's office at the time was there was the possibility of public record act requests applying to that group chat if city staff was involved. And because I wanted that to be a place for block leaders to be able to communicate with each other very openly, we let that stay with the block leaders, but also just because the requirements for content moderation just weren't feasible. Neighborhood events, probably the biggest thing is I think we've all heard of the Cupertino block parties. For those of you who are a little bit less familiar, residents can request a permit that will shut down a residential street and they can have an event, a block party in the street. Originally, that was the only instance counted as a community event, which is a requirement for block leaders. So we got two pieces of feedback from that. One, it just isn't feasible for everyone to do a block party every year. And two, not everyone wants to do a block party every year. So we took two different approaches with that. One is the block party grant, and that was a special project under council, I believe. I don't... I'm messing up the term, but it was a special... Yes, they allocated $10,000. Yes. And that is continuing on. We have had some people already use this grant. It's been really great. We had one neighborhood purchase one of those parachute things. because the block leader had great memories of doing that 10 years ago with the neighbors and wanted to bring that back. We also had folks use that to buy food for events, just to defray the cost a little bit. The block party grant, I've tried to make it not easy necessarily, but not onerous for the block leaders. So it was essentially, what is the event? Why would you like to use this money? And how does it benefit the neighborhood? And that's something that I try and come back to with the block leaders is if you're asking me if you can do something, step one, how does it benefit the community? And if it only benefits three people, we need to have a bigger conversation, right? But for folks who said, you know, for my community event, I don't want to do a block party. I'm not interested. We then started looking at alternatives. So using the grant funding from the neighbor to neighbor, from the Office of the Governor, We purchased basic supplies for emergency kits, as well as the backpacks. And so we have build-a-kit events that a block leader will bring the neighbors together, and then I and sometimes Ken will come out, we'll give the basic preparedness. of here's what to expect, here's a little bit of a peek behind the curtain of what's going on. But then also, how do people individually at the household level and at the neighborhood level create a plan that's actually going to work for them, put together a kit that's actually going to work for them? One of the things that I always bring up, and I do have my mom's permission to tell this story, is, you know, you need documentation, right? So my mom was like, oh, you know, Marta, I have my birth certificate, I have my driver's license, we're good. And I go, mama, that's great. Those are from two different countries. And so that's the sort of conversation that we're having at these Build-A-Kit events is, you know, everyone has unique experiences. How is that going to impact what you need to be safe? And yeah. This is a heat map of the block leaders in Cupertino. So as I mentioned before, we did have a different map that looked maybe a little bit more detailed. This helps preserve the privacy of block leaders, but also the previous map had a sort of, these are the homes that this block leader has claimed as part of the block. What we found with that was great, but as soon as we put the map together, someone had moved out, someone had moved in, someone had stepped away, and the map was almost immediately out of date. And that's not the kind of thing that we want to have on the city's website. We wanna be able to stand behind what we are putting there. So this map by focusing just on where the block leaders are while still preserving their privacy is the route that we went instead. Residents can, this map is available on the city website. Residents can search their address and they will be told if there is a block leader within, I believe it's a quarter mile um is the is the automatic setting but it can be adjusted um and then the resident would be prompted to reach out to me to be connected to the block leader again so that i'm not just putting a bunch of block leaders email addresses just on the city website okay so uh neighborhood watch um is in partnership with the sheriff's office. It also based off of guidance that I received from council, I want to say 2023, was how can we find a way to retain people who were part of the block leader program, but weren't quite as active, who maybe wanted to receive the information that they get in the bi-monthly newsletters, but maybe weren't able to come to a meeting every year. They weren't able to hold an event every year. So we kind of took that and adjusted the neighborhood watch program to be both neighborhood watch, but also the folks who were taking a little bit of a step back from the block leader program. And we call it that the informational only volunteers. So we've had a lot of success with the Neighborhood Watch program. We've had a lot of people start their blocks as a block leader through the Neighborhood Watch program. And the Neighborhood Watch presentation does also count as a community event. So for a lot of people, it's a really easy way to start. I will say National Night Out will be August 4th. I'm closing the registration tomorrow. So far, we already have 20 folks registered, which is actually up from last year. So I'm very excited about that. If we can go to the program postcard. One of the other bits of feedback that I received both from both from volunteers and from council was that the program needed to be promoted more, that there just wasn't enough name recognition among the general community. So we put together a postcard, I'll just, yeah, it's fine. On one side was Neighborhood Watch, on the other side was the Block Leader Program and QR codes to go to the webpages with basic information about each. These are at City Hall, at Community Hall. They are at the Sports Center and at the library. They were at Quinlan, but I just found out that they ran out, so I'll be dropping off some more. But this is partially to have just a quick pointer of, hey, what exactly is the block leader program? Why should I care? But also to build the familiarity. And like I said, the other side, there we go, is Neighborhood Watch. Interestingly, because Neighborhood Watch just has that little bit more name recognition, usually I'll flip the card. So Neighborhood Watch... is facing out to get people to pick it up and hopefully flip it over. One of the other tools that we have... Do you want to do the Hello Neighbor? The Hello Neighbor. This is a tool that we have for block leaders. It's a door hanger. There's both the Hello Neighbor for residents who... Sorry, for block leaders who are starting a block and Welcome Neighbor, which welcomes someone who has moved in recently. On the back, there's a little bit of information about the program. There is the QR code to... I believe the QR code to get... Yes. For the Cupertino 311 and for AlertSCC. But the really important thing is... I'm really sorry to come back to the other one, the other side, is... giving a place that block leaders can leave these door hangers while still leaving a way for people to contact them. So it's not just, well, I tried, I knocked on the door, no one answered. It's leaving that a little bit. And then if we could do the alert and warning. And finally, a lot of block leaders were interested in alert and warning. This is also something I heard working with the Public Safety Commission was how do we get more people signed up for alert SCC? What exactly is Genesis even? So we started with these. How can we warn you if we can't reach you? These were little business card sized things. just a little bit of information. The feedback that we got from the Public Safety Commission was they're just too small for people to read. So we came back with, if we go down one page, Yay. Okay. With something with this that has, first of all, both alert SEC and Genesis, also giving information, you know, because in emergency management, we'll say, oh, you know, evacuation order, evacuation warning. And one of the things that I hear a lot from block leaders is, Can we tone down the jargon? So on the other side of this is the definition of what exactly is an evacuation warning? What is an evacuation order? What does that mean for you as a resident? And that is all I have. Oh, sorry. And these are available at City Hall, Community Hall, Quinlan Sports Center, the Library, and the Senior Center.

Thank you, Martha. And as all of you are aware, so we did a listening session for the Block Leader program a few months ago, and we've been trying to take a more comprehensive look at this program to enhance participation and membership. So you're seeing some of the improvements and all of the new additions to the creative thinking around this program, and we'll also be issuing information to council later in the year. So with that, I'm going to open up for any questions or comments from the disaster council.

I thought it was a great presentation. I am wondering if there are some policies for the block leaders because we're moving into election season and they need to be reminded, and I know that some block leaders have not followed this, to not use it as a platform for politicking.

Yeah, so in the onboarding, it is made very clear that as a block leader, you are serving the community. You are not serving your personal, political, or financial interests. We are working on an updated handbook that spells policies like that more clearly. But despite this being a 20-year-old program, that had simply never come up before. And so it wasn't in the handbook. But we are, with the city manager and the deputy city manager's advice, updating the handbook and getting more specific and granular.

That would be great. And not just to get the information to the actual block leader, but so that the people that are in that particular neighborhood with that block leader that they know what they should be getting for information from their block leader, that would also help. Because some might not know that at this time. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, I will now open the public comment period. Do we have any requests to speak?

There are no requests, Chair.

Thank you. With that, we are moving on to our final item, which is selecting state for the special disaster council meeting to review the revised or final draft of the emergency operation plan. Is there any discussion from the disaster council?

So, Chair, I just want to let you know, as our consultants have noted, that the full Disaster Council draft will come back to the Disaster Council once it's passed through the Public Safety Commission. And so, we would request that either the Council select a special meeting date now, or staff can select a date and then notify the Council when that has happened.

So, it's going to have a separate regulation as a draft. So, Public Safety...

then council, then disaster council, then back to council for final adoption. Okay. We'd like to do it this year because, again, shelf life of EOPs is typically five years. So if we can try to come up with a tentative date, that would be great, and we can go on that.

Chair, if it helps, the next Public Safety Commission meeting is going to be July 9th and then September 11th. November.

I can tell you it's the second Thursday. Oh, sorry. Most likely, because you're going to want a leading one. Yes, but we may need to go twice to Council 1.

Okay.

Yeah. I would say September. September. So it will be after that we take the full council and then after that we're looking at the disaster council. So maybe disaster council date could be sometime in October. If we target the city council final adoption on the 20th last year, then the disaster council should be sometime before that.

Okay. Okay. are we going to do we need a special meeting like of its own that's in an off week yeah we could do that because it's during working hours anyway okay so we'll need to hold council oh for the full council um

Okay, maybe we can talk about, so maybe we don't select the pages yet because there may be different things we want to discuss. So we will get back to the selection meeting date and not vote today. And staff will speak at the meeting and notify the disaster council after a suitable date is selected. And with that, if there are no further, if there's no further business, this meeting is now adjourned. Thank you all for your time and participation. Have a great afternoon.

Thank you.