Public Safety Commission - Regular Meeting

Calling the meeting to order. This is the Cupertino disaster council meeting on 10/30/2025, 3PM. We are at City Hall in Conference Room C. Good after good afternoon, everyone. After three years Sure. Would you like both of them? Yes. Let's conduct roll call. Thank you, speaker. Chair Kapoor? Here. Vice Chair Wong?

Here.

Disaster council member Alfaro? Here. Disaster council member Fu?

Here.

Disaster council member Gerhard? Here. Disaster council member Mosley?

Here.

Disaster council member Sander? Here.

And

disaster oh,

disaster councilmember hello. Here. Apologies. Great. Good afternoon, everyone. We are convening reconvening after three years. So, it's wonderful to be here and reconvene with. It's great to bring together city staff, emergency partners, community organizations to discuss emergency management and continue strengthening our preparedness and response capabilities. This meeting represents an important opportunity for planning, collaboration, and continued discussion about how we can best serve and protect our community during times of crisis. We are currently in the process of re this is just an update for for the members of public and the council.

We're in the process of recruiting for the for the next emergency manager for Cupertino, and we hope to have the position filled in the coming weeks. So more to come on that. And finally, I would like to add a special thank you to our mayor, vice mayor, and past council members and current commission members for completing the CERT Training Academy. So those of you who did, this year, congratulations and thank you. Your participation demonstrates outstanding community leadership and a strong commitment to preparedness.

Okay. And I'd like to call the order of the meeting of the Kukundi disaster council chair. Thank you. Let's do a pledge of allegiance before we I'm gonna my screen quickly.

Oh, there

it is. For the benefit of public. Oh,

okay. We had a URL problem? Yeah. So there's probably a number of Salesforce people who wanted to

be here, but they are

Do you wanna take a seat there? Sorry about that.

Chair, may we pause for one moment? I'm hearing from a member of the public that there may be an issue with the with the virtual link. Yes. Let's meeting. Formal. I'm just going to confer with video, Lisa. Okay. Okay. So video just confirmed that the link is is working and as well as the YouTube livestream. So we can resume where we paused? Yes. Thank you. Appreciate your patience. Yeah. Thank you for I'll take us check that.

We're now going into oral communications. So this portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the disaster council on any matter within our jurisdiction and not on today's agenda. Speakers are limited to three minutes. In most cases, state law prohibits the disaster council from taking action on items that are not listed on the agenda. Clerk, do we have any requests to speak? Chair, I have received no request to speak online, virtually, or in person. K. Thank you. We will now move on to new business. And the first agenda item is the appointment of mayor Liang Chao as a nonvoting member of the disaster council.

So we will now consider the appointment of mayor Liang Chao as nonvoting member of the Cupertino disaster council. For municode, the disaster council may also include nonvoting advisory members representing civic, business, labor, veterans, professional, or other organizations with official emergency roles. These members are appointed by the chair with the approval of the governing body to advise the voting members. Are there any questions or comments from our disaster council members? I will now open the public comment period for members of the public.

Madam clerk, are there any requests to speak? Chair, I see no request to speak virtually or in person. Okay. Great. Can I have may I have a motion for this item?

I'd like to make a motion to, add, mayor Lan Chow to the disaster council.

I'll second.

K. Let's please conduct a roll call vote. Chair Kippur? Aye. Vice chair Wong?

Aye. Disaster council member Alfaro? Aye. Disaster council member Fu? Aye. Disaster council member Gerhardt? Aye. Disaster Council Member Mosley? Aye. Disaster Council Member Sander? Aye. Disaster Council Member Wu?

Aye.

The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. We will now go into the staff and disaster council reports portion of the agenda. This is the city of Cupertino the first, we have the city of Cupertino office of emergency management report, and I will invite Jim Frawley, Cupertino's emergency management consultant, who will present the report.

Thank you, madam chair and disaster council members, as well as,

madam

mayor and city council members. It's a pleasure for me to be here, in front of you to talk about the, disaster preparedness and readiness efforts that the city of Cupertino has taken. Just as a sort of background for those of you who don't know me, I, have over thirty seven years of experience in emergency response, emergency management, crisis management. I started my career in Los Angeles and eventually retired as the fire chief, for the city of Santa Cruz and went on and spent five years at Facebook leading their crisis and emergency management program. So I was, I came to the Coop Fortino about six months ago.

As Tom Chin was transitioning out, I trans transitioned in to assist in keeping the city prepared and ready. I am happy to report on a number of different items that we've been doing to keep the response capabilities and emergency preparedness within the city of Cupertino at its highest levels. Part of what we do is, always prepare for those natural and man made disasters, but also for, those special events. And as you know, in 2026, there's gonna be a number of very interesting events that happen in this area. And as a matter of fact, Mark here and I were at a tabletop exercise hosted by the city of San Jose in their EOC.

So that's just one piece, one small piece of what we do to stay engaged in the region so that we understand what's happening as well as, to stay prepared. And director Reed is here, so I'm not gonna talk anymore about Super Bowl sixty and FIFA. I'm sure you'll probably cover that. What we're doing here more locally from a disaster response activities is that we, have been working, to clear out the USC. I know Ken's been and Mark has been spending a lot of time making sure that the USC is disaster ready and and, basically turn on the light switch.

You can get going and and start operating. We're looking at some technology upgrades and just making sure that when the moment comes, we're ready to rock and roll so that there's no lag in time. Also, I've been involved in the city hall project where there's there's scoping out the in the OC over there as well. And so working on the technology piece on that, and just seeing that project, and assisting as needed. Also, what I do on a regular basis, I actually have a number of clients.

I monitor local and global events, that happen around the world and as well as locally. And as needed, I'll bring the certain events to the attention of leadership, city leadership, to talk through what are some of the concerns, if there's any issues for Cupertino. And, thankfully, there hasn't been any direct need for Cupertino to take any forward, sort of stance or presence. Their you know, the continued normal monitoring and readiness, was sufficient for any any of the number of local events as well as global events that have been happening. So as far as community preparedness goes, one of the things that, I have been brought on for is to help update the emergency operations plan for the city of Cupertino.

I've been working with my team in in doing those updates. I wanted to this is a perfect opportunity to let everybody know that within the next few weeks, we'll actually be reaching out for stakeholder meetings. We take a whole community approach. In other words, we'll talk with community volunteers. We'll talk with local business.

We'll talk with larger businesses that are here in Cupertino. We'll talk with all the different department heads and really get their input as to how to develop and and update and bring to, current standards and current times the the emergency operations plan for the city of Cupertino. That is generally at about a four to six month effort to get that in place, and we anticipate having a good final draft sometime in the February range. So if you're if you're wondering, it'll be sometime in February. As mentioned by chair Kapoor, they, just went through the hiring or the the interview process for emergency manager.

I I was lucky enough to be a part of the the last interview. I think that there is an excellent candidate that they will continue to engage with, and and hopefully, we'll bring on you know, work out and bring on board in the next few weeks. As that person comes on, I'll be happy to stay on and assist in the transition and and provide them with all of the efforts that we put in to the EOP. Some other things that the community has done is, right, continue to stay engaged, with the community based groups. There's a very strong, and storied legacy of the community based groups, whether it's the Cares or CERT or Neighborhood Watch or the Block Captains, which is excellent for any community.

Actually, trying to get that stood up is a hard part, but that's already happening here in Cupertino. Thanks to Ken and thanks to Martha. They'll talk about their efforts, after I'm after I'm done. And then finally, what I wanted to talk about is, employee training and the and what we've been doing in that realm, as we go through the EOP update is identifying employees who will be the key responders for the EOC, identifying the training that they need, putting together a plan, and then actually putting together, a calendar for that. One last thing, that I wanted to really highlight because I think it's quite impressive that city of Cupertino and the office of emergency management has done.

And anybody who's, I'm sure, IT with, you know, the mapping and everybody put their effort into it, it it revolves around evacuation planning. And I will say that Cupertino's is like a exemplary community with regards to what they've done as it relates to evacuation planning. And so I'm just gonna share real quickly a present a quick presentation that I put together, and hopefully, it'll come on. Hopefully, they can see this at home. If not, I can provide this so that it can be, updated.

So the idea is is that evacuation planning is sort of a hot button topic in all communities because people wanna know what they can do to help themselves. And what Cupertino has done is they have gone through and made very easily accessible, sort of the methodology and strategy that you should use for evacuation planning. And so let me explain. So within the Cupertino website, there's a page that you can go to, which is service finder, which actually is a great page. Right?

If you're looking for any kind of services, you can click down on the left hand side, and I see council member Gerhardt very happy about it. But it's actually really it's actually really, really it's like

On a high side.

Prime. Yeah. It's a prime example of what a community should do in order to allow the engagement community engagement. And so on that left hand side, you can go down and under where it says hazardous hazard awareness, there is a box where you can check for evacuation, the evacuation zones. And the city has been divided up into a variety of different evacuation zones based on Genesis Protect, which is an evacuation, and notification software that the county and the entire area uses, in order to get rapid notifications out.

In any case, if you click on that, you'll see that there's these zones. And if you live in any of those zones, you can go ahead and you can zoom in or click on that zone. I zoomed in to Cupertino 29. If you can see in the center, there's a little 29 that's there. So it's Cupertino 29.

If you click on that, a little box comes up, and it tells you what the status is. But, also, the map will show you the colored status, but it'll show you what the status is. Right now, it's normal. But then where it says evacuation route suggestion, the PDF, if you click on that, it actually gives you suggestions of ways to get out of the zone, which I think is excellent because the idea is is that I can't tell you what your evacuation route is. You need to do some work on your own as a resident in that zone to go, okay.

Here are the ways out. I'm gonna listen to see if there's any suggestions or directions from public safety. But in any case, I know there's three ways that I can get out of this zone. And so me and my family and my neighbors need to plan on how do we get you know, wherever you live within that zone, how do you get to where there's the green lines and then be able to get out And understand that that's a way. Because I wouldn't want, as a resident, the the city necessarily telling me this is the way you're gonna go out every single time because you can't.

Right? You just can't. So here's at least bringing awareness to people who live in this area, like, here are your evacuation zones. And then the last part of the that, the map is this whole you need to create a plan. You need to practice. You need to communicate with your neighbors. And so this is this is actually the best case and best practice within emergency management community. So what can we what Cupertino has done. So I applaud Cupertino for doing that. I know that Meredith and Tom and Marta, all had a hand in this along with many others. So I just wanted to highlight that, and, I am done. Don't know if we're gonna be taking questions or if that'll be for later.

Thank you, Jim. We will take if there are any questions or comments from the staff or council members, that was the time. K. Seeing Natalie, I will now open the public comments area for members of the public. Madam Chair, are there any requests to speak? Has seen no requests virtually and no requests in the room. Okay. So this is this item was informational only, so there's no action required. We will move on to the next item, which is Santa Clara County Office of Emergency Management report. Please welcome Dana Reed, management director for the Santa Clara County Office of Emergency Management.

Thank you, chair, vice chair. Thank you for having me. Pretty excited that you got this going again. You used to attend them when regularly back in the day, so I'm glad that, we've started that backup. So Dana Reed, director of officer emergency management for the county. So, yeah, chief and I and Martha were already in an exercise this morning about Super Bowl and FIFA. I think I'm sure you're following things in the media. It's a huge planning endeavor. There are 32 subcommittees that are working on this. They're working with City of Santa Clara where all the events will actually be held.

San Jose has a a part of it as well as they'll be they'll have for Super Bowl, they'll have one of the teams will be hosted in their city in the hotels. City of Santa Clara will host one of the teams. I don't know what teams are coming yet, so we'll we'll have to wait and see. But Super Bowl will be the first event, February, and our EOC will be activated for ten days. And we will support, not only the city of Santa Clara and San Jose and Palo Alto, which has a practice field, by the way, but we'll also be ready and set if anything happens to either one of those cities.

And more importantly, we wanna make sure that we're prepared and ready to help any other city that's not directly involved in Super Bowl. But what if? Right? What if we have something else occur? So that's one of the most important things that the operational area EOC does. It not only does it take care of the unincorporated parts of the county, it takes care of all 15 jurisdictions should they need any assistance. So we'll be activated, staffed, and ready to respond appropriately. We'll come out of Super Bowl and do lessons learned, do an after action report. What went well? What we improved?

Paul, more importantly for me, what I wanna look at is what do we need to do to be better prepared for FIFA. FIFA is a much more complex event. It's six games spread out about every three days except for the last game. So it plays out kind of as you know, every starting on the thirteenth, every three days will be another game. Then we take a break and do, the last game on July 1.

So it's very protracted. I will probably be activated for easily twenty one days, to support that event. Same thing, to buy resources, fill any gaps that are necessary. So today, we had an exercise with city of San Jose. I think there were probably about a 100 usually a 100 people there.

There were.

Yeah. 100 people in the room, all the agencies, federal, state, local, everybody was there. It was a great exercise. I will be doing a similar exercise that's gonna be transportation related in December. And, of course, there'll be invites to Cupertino as well. The emergency management team will go to that, and it'll be December 16. It'll be just as large. So we're doing as much as we can to plan, be ready. We've created what we call a common operating picture. It's a basically a document that talks about how we're all gonna communicate.

It's kind of an agreement, if you will, of how we're going to, you know, communications plan, who, will staff various locations because there'll be multiple EOCs. Santa Clara will be activated. Palo Alto, I'm sure, will be activated. Sunnyvale is not doing any EOCs. They're gonna be doing a, department operations center. VTA, of course, will have their EOC up and running. City of San Jose will have their EOC up and running. And, of course, they'll be our EOC. Plus, we've got other partners. We've got San Francisco.

So they're gonna have a lot of activity, so we're in partnership with them. And San Mateo is the pass through. If you think about it, you can't get from there to here without going to San Mateo County. So they're also a regional partner. I've just learned that Alameda County is gonna have some involvement as well.

So this is more and more of this starting to come out now, and we continue to work with that and get ready for that. I would suspect by the December and January, things should be pretty heightened up. We don't know who's coming for FIFA yet. Will there are 46 teams that'll play? We'll know by December at some point, 42 of the 46 teams, because the other four are still playing games to determine who's coming to fill the last slot between, you know, the last four teams.

But as each month goes by, we'll get a little bit more information. But three major airports involved, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, and airports you don't even think about. Half Moon Bay, a little more Pleasanton, some of the smaller general aviation airports, but they have they have long runways so they can handle you're not gonna land commercial aircraft there, but you certainly can bring quite a variety of aircraft, private jets, things like that in there. So there's a huge aviation component as well, that'll that'll unfold unfold. And transportation, BTA is gonna be probably the primary mover, obviously, with the light rail system, the stadium.

Huge security planning, to make sure, things are safe. So this is so many components. What if we have a mass casualty incident? That's all being planned out. All the hospitals have been working and planning for that event as well. So it's it's a huge lift. And I I think, you know, the most important thing, or at least from what I said is and, you know, the jurisdictions have they're they're bearing the cost. There's really not a ton of money being given towards the endeavor. So we're kinda lucky to do Super Bowl because it's a good way to really get us ready, for the World Cup. It really helps prepare us.

So that's all in motion. And then, our emergency operations plan, we recently well, last year, we recently, went through an audit with the state of California, Cal OES. They periodically require that counties submit their EOP for review. So we did that, and we received our feedback, which was quite positive. There were things to work on, like always, but it was positive.

We've done all that work, and we are going to be sending our EOP, our current emergency operations e o emergency operations plan to the board of supervisors November 4. And I was telling the chief today that, as soon as that gets adopted, we'll shoot a copy over to him because that may be helpful for what he's working on with your EOP. We're also working on a template that any jurisdiction could use, but I don't think that'll be done probably for about another thirty days. But we're working on that as well. And so that'll be a very helpful document.

It'll it should be covering all the latest legislative requirements that counties have. And, also, we'll talk heavily to recovery, and we'll talk to, access and functional needs and communications and so on. So we're pretty excited about getting that getting that done. We have a a situational awareness platform. It's called VOC. It's it's new to us. Have you guys already had your training?

Yes.

Okay. Good answer. So we have that platform. It's fairly new. We're trying to build it more as a dashboard so it's a lot easier, more intuitive to use than what we had before with the old system.

The county, purchased, that software program. It's free to all the jurisdictions to use, and we're out doing training and orientation to it and continuing to get it ready to go, especially it'll really get its biggest use will will be first by Super Bowl, most likely, unless I have something bad happen between now and Super Bowl. You never know. But that's our common operating, platform. Pretty happy with it so far, and, that'll be, something that Cupertino will be able to utilize.

And and they've already had their training, which is great. Your neighbors, Saratoga, recently, did a test, a LORD SCC test, and they did a little ad campaign and notified the community. And I think they sent out about 8,200 alerts and then got the feedback they they got back. I think they discovered a few folks don't live in Saratoga anymore, and so those folks asked to be opted out. But they also picked up, I think, about 200 new, registers, so it was effective for them.

And any city can do that. We helped them. We actually on the day they started to push it out, we actually were on the on the teams with them to make sure everything went smooth. And I know Cupertino has had a long history of interest in Alert SCC and notifying their residents. So if you need any assistance, want any help with that, let us know. We're happy to assist with it. And it actually went pretty smooth. I didn't hear anything negative, by by the way. I don't know if you did, but I think I didn't hear any negative press or any huge complaints. You know? Just a notification from people, hey. I don't live in Saratoga anymore. So that's pretty minor. Yes. Sorry to cut in on you, but

I wanted to let you know that, Marta and Rochelle had been working on this new business card, which is to help recruit people to sign up for Alert SCC. Nice. Right? So we'll pass those out, and Scott all the And then

pass this down around

the table.

Okay? Yeah. Can you can you print me, like, 10 or 20,000 of

them while you're at it?

I Thank you. Hey, Cheryl. We will

also post this online for the public after the meeting. Thank you.

No. That's awesome. Yeah. This is this is something that they came up with. It was a great idea, I thought. And your, your topic was timely. So Okay.

I'm here to help.

Yes.

Alright. You're welcome. So I you know, essentially, going forward, when you have your meetings, you know, it'd be nice to always let us know what if you have a particular area of interest that you really want us to come and talk about, let us know. We're always happy to come and and share that information. I I think, we're doing some tech well, we're doing some technology upgrades in our EOC too, by the way, in preparation for Super Bowl.

They're in process right now. Should be done by December. We also did a little bit of remodeling in the EOC to make the workflow a little more harmonious, if you will, especially especially adding a conference conference room that we never had. You know, it's always hard to find meeting spaces when you're activated. You wanna take a team off to the side to figure out a solution and a problem.

It's tough to find private find a private place to do that. So we are in the process of doing that. Everything should be wrapped up in December. Got the December 16 exercise. And we're gonna have a big four or five day exercise in March, which will be centered around, a complex coordinated attack, which is always a concern. Right? And so we'll be having that exercise. Coop team will be involved in that as well. So we're doing everything we can do to prepare and share as much as we can share with our jurisdictional partners. We've provided tons of training classes at no cost that folks can come to, and there'll be a few more.

Next year, I think we're gonna bring back the whole large event series minus the one the four forty class. Gotcha. Yeah. We're always here for you to support you, and you always let us know if you need help. If something happens and you need support, even in your own EOC, I can we can send folks to help out. And, I think that's about it on my end for at least this time until we meet next time. And do you have any questions of me?

Thank you, Director Reed. Thank you for the update and for your continued partnership.

You're welcome.

Are there any questions from members of the Disaster capsule at this time? I would just one quick question is

Yes.

So with what Jim shared, does that mean that we are already doing the alert SCC, or do we need to sign up with you to do a

test report? The city is part of the Alert SCC, as run by the county, but the city also sends them out. When we did the, great shakeout drill Mhmm. In October, the alert that went out to all staff was sent through AlertSCC. It is an opt in program, and the business cards are part of, our effort to get more residents signed up.

So do people need to opt in every year? No.

You do have to opt out if you decide you don't wanna be in it. You do have to opt out in writing. But, yeah, once you're in, you're in. Please tell us no.

Sounds good. Yeah.

Thank you.

Chair vice chair Wong is has a raised hand. Yes.

I have a question just really in terms of funding. So for these activities, are are they planned into the budget? Does the county provide the budget back to the city, or how is that budget allocated?

Oh, that's a great question. I know we don't give the sun, city the money back. Sorry. But the good news is the county does pay for it. So the alerting and warning platform is actually built on a program called Everbridge. We've had it for several years now. I think I just signed a three year contract again. Don't hold me to the I I'm pretty sure it's three years. But we're gonna we're gonna keep the platform. The county pays for that, and every jurisdiction has access to it at no cost to the jurisdiction because we can all agree that you need to have something in place for alert in the morning.

Just look at all the things that have occurred. Go all the way back to 2018 with the fires in 2020 and so forth and moving forward and all the things that we see across The United States. You have to have a good alerting and warning platform. And we do have it. The county pays for it, and you're welcome to use it.

And we do training. So if you wanna train staff, we're happy to send somebody over and do the training with staff. And then, of course, we're always available to assist the all of your public safety dispatch centers, whoever you're you know, for well, for here, it's county fire and sheriff's Department. So County Comm actually has the capability of putting out an alert and warning, as well. And but the other PSAPs, you know, San Jose PD and Fire and the Override PD and Los Gatos, for example, PD, they all have access to the pool.

In the event that they're they aren't able to do it for whatever the reason is, the default is back to county communications. They always have somebody on duty that can move that message out for it to, whoever they need to move it out to for the jurisdiction. Chief touched on Genesys. Great program. The entire valley is gridded, so it's it's an easy tool even for you to look at publicly.

And the evacuation route up I need that presentation. That was awesome, by the way. Yeah. Know, we just I think the biggest thing with that, to tell you the truth and the chief talked about, is folks have to take the time to get to understand know your zone and really take a look at you know, we're so patterned, even me. You know, I come out of the driveway. I go the same way every day every day. Look. Look. Look. Look.

You have to really make a conscious effort to really know what your alternate routes are out of your neighborhood and be prepared to not go the way you normally think you should go, but the way you might need to go. So I think it's great what the city of Cupertino has done. I'm hoping other folks will replicate that and use it as well. It is a it is a good tool. It's in place.

Now that tool, vice chair, is, in your case, that is being provided by County Fire, your fire department, which is awesome. So they're taking care of that. I take care of the unincorporated, jurisdiction, and then, you know, the other cities have to they have to sign a contract with, with Genesis. So that's the one exception where the county is not paying for everything.

Are we using are we using the mass notification system or the critical event management or both on the all for Everbridge? Is it is it just the mass notification, or are we also doing the monitoring?

Well, you're using you should be using Everbridge, which is aka Alert Alert SCC. Genesys is the product that you use to identify the zone that needs to be evacuated, more specifically, either in a preplanned event or the incident commander on scene will determine that, then that gets communicated out, and that messaging can go out via alert SCC. Chief Estado, I see here. You good? Alright. Alright. Got a thumbs up from the chief. We're good.

Alright. Good day there. Question.

I just wanted to make sure we're able to use the mass notification system as it is

today. Absolutely.

Like, an oil spill happens on 280 in De Anza. Like, a fire actually happens somewhere else. Those are being sent out to people. So okay.

As if if appropriate, they can be and should be. Yep.

Thank you.

Madam chair.

Yes. I'm not going

If I could just supplement something we're saying there, Dana, for that on the evacuation routes, we are letting all the residents and businesses all know that these are available to be familiar with them. But the way and the direction that are act they're actually used is to follow the direction of the alert warning. Don't go and just say, I've got three exits. I'm going three. You I can get out of my area three ways. Follow the instructions, from the Good point. Notification. Very good point. That's good.

Okay. And if there are no more questions from the disaster council members, I will now open the public comment period for members of the public. May I have any requests? I have no requests virtually, and I have none from the room. K.

Oh, watch. Oh. Sorry, Heidi. Yes.

We do have wine.

Yeah. You mentioned that the cost for these events coming up, the World Cup in or World FIFA and the game, there's a cost associated with that. Is that something that, like, the cities are bearing?

Or Well, not your that not your city unless you decide to do events yourself. But no. But for me, yes. And for Santa Clara, absolutely.

Thank you.

And San Jose is yeah. So any of the cities that are hosting events or or responsible for safety and security of events, hoteling, trans you know, transportation escorts, and things like that, yes. But unless your city decides to throw a big party, probably not. So there you go.

Okay. Thank you. And, again, this information was informational only, and no action is required.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me here today too. I appreciate it.

Yeah. For coming.

You bet.

K. We'll move on to the next item, which is the we will receive a report from CooperTina Bluff leader coordinator Martha Drell. Yeah.

Okay. Quick presentation.

On the other side.

Alright. My name is Marta Jung. I've been with the city since 2022 as part of the office of emergency management. As the block leader coordinator, I also oversee the neighborhood watch programs. So in this past year, we've had three meetings held.

One was with a speaker from the fire safe council. One was from the senior center, and one was from the active transportation plan. You may notice, usually, we do have four meetings a year. Unfortunately, in January, I had pneumonia, and we did have to cancel that one. The topics are chosen partially on the advice of our block leaders of what specifically they want to hear about, but also topics that, the city feels are relevant to residents.

So what we actually heard after the senior center presentation was a lot of people saying that there were some services at the senior center that they'd never heard of before, and were unaware that they were available to them. Currently, the program has 135 members. This year, block leaders hosted 22 community events, and two block party grants were issued. That is through the city work plan funding, by council, up to $300 is available to, block parties that have received a permit from our public works department. The neighborhood watch program, has been a little less active this year.

We had four presentations given in partnership with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. Part of that is because a theory is that we have reached saturation. Another was that most of the presentation requests that I received were not actually for neighborhood watch, but were for, actually fire related things. National night out was August 5. That is a annual event held across the nation. This year, we had 23 registered national night out events, up from 15 in 2024.

K. Thank you, Martha, for your continued coordination with our, community block leaders. Are there any questions or comments from our disaster council members at this time? Okay. I will now open the public Chair, I do see oh.

Hi

there, a joke with it.

Yeah. I'm wondering what is the coverage of the block leader neighborhood program.

Yes. So

we are saying it's saturated. I'm just wondering. Are we covering all the different areas of the city?

Yeah. So the when I mentioned saturation, that was for the neighborhood watch presentation because that has been given, I believe, since 2001. And it's been a very similar presentation, because a lot of the, crime prevention tips have always been lock your doors. If you have an alarm, make sure it's turned on. Know your neighbors.

The block leader program in the past, there was a map that showed, I believe it was actually, it's, here in the room, but it it showed orange highlighted streets, of where, block leaders were. We moved to a heat map instead, for a couple reasons, partially because there was some concern that, with the old map, there was some personal information that was available that, some some block leaders felt that people could point and say, yes. That's where the block leader is. Also, because as people move in and out of the area, households join and leave blocks. So as soon as we would have a map up and ready, it was already outdated.

So instead, to to anticipate the fact that things are always going to change, we moved to the heat map style, and that is available on the city website.

Yeah. I've seen the heat map on the GIS site, but it doesn't feel as helpful as the old map that we used to have, because I can see exactly where what houses are included in the block and where we are missing. So if it's possible to still have Diodes map available internally, at least some online version now would be really helpful Because I would like to see, are we covering everywhere? Should we do more outreach in certain areas? And then another question is for Neighborhood Watch.

How active are they? I think many people might have signed up. The Neighborhood might have signed up a long time ago, and then they haven't really done anything. So I'm just wondering.

Ma'am, so the the, structure of Neighborhood Watch is quite different to the block leader program. Neighborhood Watch does not require ongoing participation. We ask that, one person in a neighborhood, arrange a presentation. They can then choose to, issue a request to the city to have a neighborhood watch signed put up on their street. That's a petition that requires, I believe, 60% of the block. However, there is there is no required action after that.

So so that's so it's likely that a neighborhood has that sign put up ten years ago, and whoever was involved might have already moved on. And then that sign is just a sign that doesn't really mean anything for the people who actually live there now. How do we know if anyone is still connected to that program even? Do we know at all? So we have no way of telling. Right?

No. We we do know who has in the past, had a neighborhood watch presentation. For a lot of our current block leaders, the neighborhood watch presentation is an introduction to the idea of the block leader program. So we have a lot of crossover in the two groups. I would not say at this time that our public works department, and I have worked together to see, where all of the signs are and to cross reference that, but that is something we could look into.

So I suppose we have a table of here are all the neighborhood watch program. Here is when they have when last requested a presentation or any activity from them.

Yes.

Now we might have some idea how active they are. And in terms of block leader program, just curious. And do we have any historical data? How often? How how it has grown or maybe leveled off?

Yes. Chair permission to be a data nerd for a second. So, unfortunately, the data that we had prior to 2022 is a little bit skewed because the rosters were not checked to make sure that we were only keeping active block leaders on the list. When I took over in 2022, one of the first things I did was reach out to everyone who hadn't logged in to our volunteer portal in more than two years. In some cases, folks had moved away.

In some cases, they had been added to the volunteer list but never actually got started as a block leader. And for various other reasons, there were people who were no longer involved in the program. So, unfortunately, prior to 2022, we had a very artificially inflated number.

What is that number?

We Off the top

of my head, I'm not sure, but I can tell you that after the first round, we had 365. Mhmm. And that number has reflected down to the 130 ish number as people have really drilled down into if they were going to be active or not in the program.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Martha, and a quick comment. Any other request to speak? I see none, chair. K. We will move forward. The next item is a citizen floor report, and we'll now hear from Ken Erickson, who is the citizen floor for the results.

It's a hot seat over here. Excuse me. One second. Good afternoon. My name is Ken Erickson, citizen core coordinator. Been

here for

a little over twenty years, a resident here for thirty something years. And, so this is kinda home. So all the stuff that we do is, really right in our neighborhood. But, I wanted to hand it out. This is our report.

Basically, what we do on an annual basis or quarterly basis is gather the data, what's going on, and what do we see. So it's it kinda gives us some data points about the number of people, the number of hours that we do, the reporting zones, how many volunteers are in each of the reporting zones, the types of things that have happened that we do that we can quantify. So we can get trends of what's going on up or down in these. So we watch these. We did use Alert SCC as one of our activations for a CARES exercise this year.

So it's something that we use, as a tool to, activate our volunteers. Okay? So it's it's a great tool for doing that. The other thing is we have for the city, we've got basically about 60,000 residents, and it could double up during the course of the day with the people coming into the community. Right?

So for us and what we do in engaging the community for preparedness is really looking at, what can we do to to help manage expectations and share that information. So it's the people and the residents that are out there that, you know, the response time is gonna be hours to days and that they should start planning on that and what's the capability and the capacity from the city. What are they gonna be needing to do? And so we put that out so that all of the people in our area, catchment area, know how to take care of themselves, their family, their neighborhood, and to be able to report their status. So we're looking at the entirety of the city to be able to do that, okay, when something happens.

So our organization is set up, with the three branches, with the amateur radio group, the CERT group, and the medical reserve corps. So those are the three branches that all work together under the citizen corps umbrella. And with that, we have a steering committee, which is seven members representing the different branches, and they get together on a monthly basis to come up with what's the plan, what do we need to do, and assessments. And we're currently working on the 2026 calendar. Okay?

But I wanted to share with you, this is our map that's up on the wall, and this is that the whole city. Okay? And in it, you can see there's the six reporting zones that we have. Right? And then we also have in here that says, where is everybody and what are they doing? That's the data. You you'll see it on the map now. How many people and what areas in each of the reporting zones? Okay? But we are engaged with the community outreach.

Probably this last quarter, there were seven different events that we were participating in, to get visibility and engagement with the community, with the volunteers. Okay? That's this last quarter. The other thing is now we have and I wanna say thank you for city council. Oh, where did they go?

City council and the city staff for taking the CERT program because it with the leadership and showing that this is important, then everything else is possible. Without the leadership and I think you've all been in projects. If that wasn't on the leader's agenda or the thing that was important, it really wasn't a fun project to work on. So this, I wanna say thank you very much for doing that because we have, city council and ex city council that have gone through and taken the CERT program. And we've had two let's say, we've had 14 new people that have signed up just coming in through the volunteer portal and finding everything out about us.

You know, they did it on their own. But we've also had now thirteen, twenty six people that have gone through the cert last two cert academies for Cupertino. Okay? Now we're working on the onboarding. So they get the information. Now we've gotta say, how do you apply that information? CooperTeal really engages with the volunteers in the emergency plan and the response planning preparation. So we really expect them to be involved. Alright? Right now, you can see there's over a thousand volunteers.

Okay? The things that we do for the, the branches is with CARES. That's our resilient backbone communications. Those are the ones that are gonna be able to make the communications and get them from the neighborhoods. And we've initiated a FRS, GMRS radio program this last couple years to get people so that they can report their status to the reporting zone.

Instead of physically having to walk there, they can report via radio. We can take that information from the neighborhoods to the reporting zones, from the reporting zones. We can communicate that information up to the city and to the city EOC and make this determination to what we need to do with it there, and then also be able to make communications from the city to the county. Okay? So that's really the CARES amateur radio part.

We're also the custodian of the communications vehicle, 469, and that one gets exercised every month with the EOC to EOC radio test. That's a countywide test, but also just the regular exercises and maintenance and and things are done there. It's a great partnership with the public work for us. Thanks. The CERT folks, these are the ones that have received the basic training of being able to organize the neighborhoods.

And this is where we look at when we have something happens in the city. We need to know and get information about the whole city. So the city is divided into the six zones, but each of the six zones divided into a Canvas map area so that we can if we have not heard from a particular area, we can deploy a team to find out and do the assessments. And that's part of our capabilities. Oh, how do you smile?

And then so that's one of the things that we've done. But in order to manage all of these thousand volunteers and activities and different things that have gone on, we developed the volunteer management annex. And in that, that's how we manage all of the volunteers. How do we onboard them? What do we do?

How do we get you know, train them? What how we track that stuff? That's where the volunteer portal is really our key tool in doing that, managing, and keeping track of all the information that we need to do so that everybody, yeah, that responds, meets the requirements that we need to have from the DSW, from the state, from the city, to have people either volunteering on behalf of the city with DSW coverage, insurance coverage, or city insurance coverage. Okay? So we wanna make sure that all of our people that are responding on our behalf have that protection.

Okay? I think when you look at the handout that I gave you, the back the second page, this is a part of the annex or the appendices of the volunteer annex on capabilities. The first part is our auto activation. One of the things that we have and we've set up with the city is that after an event, say an earthquake, these primary auto activation capabilities, the volunteers will start doing. Okay?

Because we know the city's gonna be in kind of its mode to get set up and get going. The volunteers will be able to start doing this and getting the information from all of the neighborhoods, which are about 30% covered, basically, if you look at that map with the yellow, to be able to get information back out to the city. The areas that are not covered are areas that we're gonna have to go and find out for ourselves. Takes more time, more resources. So our ultimate goal would be all of the city be covered.

So that's kind of our our goal, if that's what we wanna do, you know, make sure that we can do that. The other thing is the tools that we have to do all of these. If you go to the next page on that capabilities, you'll see each one of the capabilities it's called out, and it's the what is it? Who does it? When does it get done?

What are the trainings and things that need to be done so that the people asked to do this capability can do it safely. Okay? And we get what we need to have done. The other thing is we've developed a number of field training handbooks like this that we want. This is why we do the orientation for people that come into the city so they know what the plan is, how do they integrate it, because everybody in the city has a role.

Right? And the more educated, the better are that those people are gonna be able to be part of the solution and part of the recovery versus part of the problem. Okay? So any questions for Citizen Corp?

Thank you, Kim, for the update on the citizen corps activities and your ongoing efforts to engage residents in emergency preparedness and. And I would say for for those of us who are in the room and those of us who are watching on Zoom, consider taking a certain. It's it's worth it. And at this time, I'm gonna ask if there's any questions or comments from our disaster council members. I would just like to say thank you to the citizen corps that helps us every year with fourth of July. It really is a big help when we're putting on that that event. So Well, thank you. For what you do there.

It's great to be able to work with our partners. You know? And, ideally, it's with our internal partners, but also our external partners. There we go. You know? That are internal, to be able to do more of those events and activities together.

Any other comments or questions from the disaster council members? If not, I will now open the public comment period for members of the public. Are there any requests to speak?

Chair, I see no request to speak.

Okay. With that, this is also an informational item, so no action from council is needed at this time. The next item is is talking about the next meeting, which is 2026. And the next meeting of the Cupertino disaster council meeting will occur in 2026 with the exact date to be determined. Okay. That will follow-up accordingly when the date has been determined. And with that, if there are no other items or comments, the meeting is now adjourned. I would like to thank all of you for your participation and for your ongoing commitment to community safety and emergency preparedness.