Town Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to call this meeting of the Los Gatos Town Council to order. Deputy Clerk, may we have a roll?

Council Member Rennie.

Here.

Council Member Hudes.

Here.

Council Member Badami. Here. Vice Mayor Aristo. Here. Mayor Moore.

Here. Thank you very much. So we have a full agenda this evening. Lots of important business before the Town Council. But before we start with some of our business items, we have a few very fun things to take care of. So I will begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. And we have three young women here to help us with the Pledge of Allegiance. We have Madeline, Olivia, and Amelia who can come on up. And I have a little bit of information about Madeline and Olivia. They both go to Venture Christian Academy. They live in Los Gatos. And Madeline is passionate about competitive dance. And she takes seven hours a week of classes at West Valley Dance Company. That's amazing. That's harder than being a council member. And her favorite subject is math and enjoys competing in national competitions. When asked about her favorite thing about Los Gatos, she said her favorite activity in Los Gatos is the Sunday farmer's market where she likes to run, play, and eat crepes. Excellent answer. And then for Olivia, she is interested in math, phonics, tennis, acrobatics, gymnastics, swimming, piano, and singing and theater. And when asked about her favorite thing about Los Gatos, she says she loves to ride her bike with her family around town and also go to the farmer's market, go to the different shops and play on the playgrounds. Do you like crepes too? Yeah, OK. And then we have Amelia here, who we're very fortunate to have. So I'm going to hand over the mic for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ready salute. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Well done. Thank you very much. Can we give them a big round of applause? All right, okay, before you go, I'm starting with Councilmember Badami here. Would you mind shaking each of our hands? Then you'll get a little gift on the way out. And then you come on this way, yep, so. All right, big thank you to our pledge lead. OK, so now we are going to honor our residents of the month and our small business of the month. And so for our residents of the month, we have two residents of the month this month. And those are our chair and vice chair of our youth commission. So Cody and Anjali, you can come on up. And I'll just say a little bit about why you're being honored. So for those that don't know, the Youth Commission is an advisory body to the town council made up of about 19 of exactly 19 high school and a few middle school students. And so Cody and Anjali kept us on track for the past year or so. Vice Mayor Marie Aristo and I actually just had the pleasure of interviewing the next cohort of youth commissioners along with Cody and we can tell you it was very, very difficult. We have such amazing young people in the community and it was a very competitive process and says a lot about the leadership that you all have brought to that commission. So I'll just say a few nice things about each of you. So Cody Chen, congratulations on being named one of Los Gatos' residents of the month. As chair of the Youth Commission, you've led your fellow commissioners with energy, dedication, and a genuine commitment to this community. Under your leadership, the commission has taken on an ambitious slate of projects this year, from teen wellness initiatives to environmental advocacy to organizing the town's first ever multicultural celebration. This was an incredible event. The event drew performers and presenters from around the world and showed the whole town what is possible when young people lead with vision and inclusivity. So thank you and congratulations, Cody. Thank you. And then for Anjali, congratulations on being named also our Los Gatos resident of the month. As vice chair of the commission, you've brought focus, passion, and purpose to the work. Your leadership on environmental issues, including educating the community about the plastic bag ban and the importance of environmental stewardship, reflects your commitment to the future of Los Gatos. You also participate, you both participate in Spring into Green, where you delivered very meaningful remarks, so thank you both very much. And we're just so fortunate to have such amazing young leaders, so congratulations to Anjali.

Thank you.

And we'll hear from Cody and Anjali both in just a few minutes when they present the Youth Commission end of year report, so we'll take a quick picture.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you both very much. Congratulations. OK, and now we have our small business of the month, which is Petals Creamery. So please come on down. So congratulations to Nathan and Marcel and the entire Petals team on being named Los Gatos' Business of the Month. I was just at Petals yesterday, or two days ago, getting a delicious chai latte. Because Petals was celebrating their one year anniversary, which has flown by. Petals brings something, I think, really unique to Los Gatos, rooted in Persian culinary tradition and realized through years of dedication by two locals who grew up dreaming of opening a place like this. From saffron, pistachio ice cream, to baklava, cannoli, every item on the menu reflects a culinary tradition that Los Gatos is lucky to have in our town. One year in, Petals has already become a beloved fixture of our community, and we are so glad to have you in town and look forward to continuing to watching your dreams blossom so thank you very much congratulations do you want to share a little bit about pedals please

Hey, everybody. My name's Nathan. I'm one of the owners of Pedals Creamery. Like Mayor Rob mentioned, there's my co-owner, Marcel, who's not here. But we grew up in the area. I went to Saratoga High. He went to Lee High School. We've been friends since then. And Pedals has been literally a dream of ours since that time. We've always talked about it. And Los Gatos was the city we knew it was going to open in. Even though we sort of grew up in other areas, we knew Los Gatos is the place, because that's where we would come when we were kids. like TCBY, I don't know if anyone remembers the TCBY, but that was my go-to with my parents. So I just wanted to say thank you to the town of Los Gatos, to the mayor, to my friends and family who have been so supportive over the last year, and we hope we're here for many more years to come. So thank you so much. Thank you. Congratulations. Can we get a quick picture?

Thank you.

Congratulations. Thank you.

Okay, and our last recognition tonight is for National Police Week. And just to say a little bit about our police department, we'll have our Chief Jamie Field come up to receive this proclamation from the Los Gatos Town Council. But Los Gatos is incredibly blessed to have such an incredible police department. You know, I think it's something our community sometimes takes for granted that we have such a dedicated group of individuals serving our community. Policing is hard, hard work. And it's often thankless. You know, you're not a lot of the time, you know, when somebody gets pulled over, there's not a whole lot of thank yous. And so it can be it can be difficult. But we I think we in Los Gatos really try to do a great job elevating and recognizing and celebrating our Los Gatos Monte Sereno police department because of the amazing work that you all do. And I just have to say, under the leadership of our chief, we are incredibly fortunate. Folks in our community might not know that our chief is very involved in the state of California, advocating for policies throughout our community and our broader community in the state to increase community policing, treat our police officers better, and just do more to grow the profession. So thank you very much, and I'm honored to proclaim this month, or this week, National Police Recognition Week. So thank you very much, Chief. Do you wanna say a few words?

Thank you very much, Mayor and Council. I must say that the Police Department absolutely feels the support of the community throughout the year, not just during this particular week, and also the support of the Council. So we absolutely enjoy serving all of you, protecting all of you, and coming together in the community policing model that we very proudly embrace. Thank you.

Thank you. Congratulations. Did you get a great picture? All right. So, um, uh, another one more fun thing, um, before we get into the business of the meeting is the youth commission end of year report. So I intro to a little bit the work of the youth commission. Uh, and so we will now hear from the youth commissioners themselves on what they've been up to for the past year. Um, so come on up.

Okay, so good afternoon, Town Council. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Cody Chen, and I'm the chair of this year's Youth Commission. So it's been around eight months since the start of your presentation, and we're really excited to update you on our progress since then. And just before we get started on each of the ad hocs, just last meeting, we also voted to recognize two local businesses, an environmental friendly business and a youth friendly business. So I'd like to take just a minute to really quickly present those. So for the environmental friendly business, the environmental ad hoc, throughout the year, for their work plan, they went through local businesses, downtown, all throughout Los Gatos, conducted interviews, kind of just observing the daily progress, process of kind of the business operations. And for the first time, I want to say and I think the history of the Youth Commission, we actually voted to recognize a business in East Los Gatos for the environmentally friendly business of the year. And that is Cantina. So I believe that we will go in person to actually award this to them. All right, and now for the youth friendly business of the year, we picked a business downtown that's really friendly to kids, and also they hire a lot of high schoolers. And that is probably something a little bit more familiar, but we picked automobile, automobile. All right, so moving on. Just a quick reminder, at the start of the year, each ad hoc presented their own slide on the work plan consisting of both one year and two year goals so that they'd have something to continue working on for the next year. So we're really excited to update you on our progress.

Can you go to the next slide?

Okay, so for our first ad hoc, we have community outreach led by Nova Jihari.

Cody's tall, wow. Hi, nice to meet all of you again. I'm Nova Jaraj. I'm the community outreach lead. I'm gonna just run through a few of our events we've had this year. As usual, we did the Christmas parade. With the funding cuts, you know, there were some adjustments, but we did end up being able to walk and we got custom Youth Commission shirts, which was super exciting. the big thing i was really excited about this year was the multicultural fair it's something i wanted since my first year on the commission so i was really happy to like finally bring it in this year um the event was definitely a success you know it was uh i think one of the first events youth commission has done where like It's really been our own initiative and we didn't just like attend an event that the town was already hosting. We really wanted to do something of our own. And what better thing than to support the diversity that Los Gatos has in a time that can feel pretty divided, right? So there were performances, there were booths, people were giving out snacks. It was overall just a very friendly event. And we also had Spring into Green after the Multicultural Fair where we promoted the Youth Commission, we gave out native wildflower seeds, and we did a lot of work in terms of trying to make sure the town knows about the Youth Commission, knows what our role is. When we gave out stickers and stuff, it was like super great on the outreach side of things. So yeah. You can go to the next slide. Yeah, okay, and then we have Teen Wellness, which I believe is Saketh.

Hello, council members and Los Gatos community. My name is Saki Chinacola, and I've been the teen wellness ad hoc lead for the 2025-2026 Youth Commission year. And before I talk about what we have achieved this year, I wanted to shout out my team members, Mania, Kat, and James for their contributions. We have all played an equally important role in achieving our goals, and I want to make sure that they get recognized along with me. First goal we focused on achieving was spreading awareness about mental health and its prevention. So the most significant thing that we accomplished under this heading was the TikTok slash Instagram real style video in which we briefly mentioned five highly recommended methods to reduce stress.

Are we playing that? I don't know if we can play that.

Yeah, the link's right there.

Home specifications with limited program capacity.

yo are you feeling okay you look like you're going through a lot honestly no i'm feeling really stressed out oh well that's completely normal you're not alone have you tried any stress management techniques recently i know what they are but i don't really know which ones to use oh well i do here are five stress management techniques you can use to manage your stress Yo, are you feeling OK? OK. Thank you. So we thought that this video would be great to spread awareness just because it realized the important information quickly, which ensures that we don't lose any kids' attention, taking into consideration their attention spans. And then another thing we did to advance this outreach effort was to create a flyer with similar information. And the idea behind this was that, you know, kids would walk through the halls and see this, you know, stress relief tips on the wall and hopefully learn them through that. After completing these two things, we transitioned to our next goal, which is planning events and actually spreading the content that we have created. So far, we have been working on restarting the Dog Day event at LGHS, which we hoped would give us a venue to actually spread this info. For those who don't know, the Dog Day event is basically an event where we work with a company called Canine Companions, and they bring a bunch of mental health service dogs where kids can just, you know, it'll be during lunch, and kids can interact with the dogs and kind of give them a break from, you know, maybe a test that they had the period before. And so we hope to, like, maybe display the video or give out the flyers there. And as for what we accomplished this year, that's where it ends because we're planning that right now and we're getting ready to host it. And so next year we want to continue this goal of creating events and actually interacting with the people that we are representing. And also hope to expand our efforts to more than just LGHS because we know those schools are equally as important to our community. But more specifics on that will be talked about in the work plan presentation later this fall, so stay tuned. Thank you for allowing my team and I to represent the youth, and I'm excited to do it again next year. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Eli. I'm the chair of the Traffic Safety Ad Hoc, and I worked with Wilbur, Hiron, and Arnav this year in our work plan. So our work plan this year was mainly a continuation of our goals from last year, developed using over 700 student and parent responses describing transit issues in schools across Los Gatos. To begin the year, we worked with Parks and Public Works to process this information, including identifying and doing site visits in four areas identified as dangerous by parents and students. We also noticed from survey results a great deal of interest in improvements to the public bus system. To further quantify this interest and the current public transit gap affecting youth ridership, we conducted bus surveys at LGHS and Union, which collected about 900 responses total. Using this survey data, we developed plans to address several key factors. 1st off from those is education. So we found from our survey results that about 50% of the schools attendees who drive actually don't know that the town has a bus system at all. period. So I think given that number, I can I can pretty confidently say this is the biggest issue facing public transit in the town. So to address this, the ad hoc is working with Safe Routes to Schools on developing curriculum on buses at middle schools. We're also developing specific proposals for increased signage at several bus stops to increase visibility, which we intend to present to VTA in the next few weeks. Our 2nd point here is transit timing. So we found from our survey that actually. Uh, is pretty poorly aligned with current school start and end times, which makes it a lot harder for kids to take public transit. So, in collaboration with a friend of mine who has some very advanced programming skills at LGHS, we've created an optimized route, an optimized schedule that is for VTA's Route 27 that aligns with school start and end times. Survey data suggests that this could provide over 80 new riders from Union and LGHS alone, in addition to ridership gains from Fisher, Dartmouth, and Lee, which would also be affected. This comes at pretty minimal cost to the VTA because it's basically just reworking the existing resources we have to get the biggest bang for the buck. Our 3rd point is free bus passes. So I know provided counsel with a proposal last year to buy free bus passes for students and staff at the cost of about 41,000 dollars a year. So, some preliminary survey data indicates that the town is pretty unlikely to overpay for those passes compared to monthly passes. And it would create a pretty sizable ridership gain. I believe we were thinking. 76 students that's excluding staff and gains that would be made just by the. Education gains of having everyone aware of public transit. So traffic safety is continuing to develop this proposal and some better, better quantify the gain we would get from free bus passes. And we plan to come back with something more fleshed out in our fall presentation. Uh, and then another general 1 of the commission's goal of the traffic safety ad hoc schools is we've continued doing outreach at schools and working with schools to. Present flyers and outreach materials on safety that should educate people on. Safety requirements and state and federal laws. Okay, that is my presentation. Thank you guys for letting me, giving me the opportunity to present tonight. I'm happy to answer, very happy to answer any questions you have. We also have a website to present some of the data we found in this project, and I'm happy to share that with you as well, if that is of interest to the Council.

Thank you.

Hello, Council. My name is Connor Krause, and Anjali and I help lead the environmental ad hoc. Before I begin, I'm going to try to keep it brief, but I just want to thank the Council and all the community members for allowing the Youth Commission to present today. I think it shows how strong this community is and is a great example of one of the many benefits of living in Los Gatos. Um, so what the environmental ad hoc did is 1st of all, we came in this year and we presented a plan that we wanted to strengthen our accessory ordinance, which we've done previously with the plastic straw ordinance specifically with making utensils for take out restaurants be compostable or alternatives. And so we started that by surveying a plethora of businesses in the downtown area, as well as, for the first time ever, as Cody was getting into, also East Los Gatos. We wanted to broaden sort of who we were surveying. And we found... a lot of interesting data first off how much plastic is being used what that kind of plastic is and we were able to take that data and figure out what the fiscal impact would be if we were to create this ordinance of making all takeout plastic bpi compostable or cpla alternate cpla alternatives And we found that that fiscal impact probably outweighed the environmental gain. However, we also found a lot of great things from our survey, which is that there's a lot of great methods that are already being used by restaurants in our community. I think often we take for granted that we live in a community where the average person is more environmentally conscious than in other parts of the united states we saw a lot of great measures by different restaurants and companies in downtown whether that is if you're eating in the store you're going to be given metal utensils whether that's already having the highest grade plastic of bpi compostable plastics Or also just making it a by request model. So you have to request to have plastic utensils and and I drafted out a two year plan at the beginning of the year. Just because and I temporarily leave the community for the next four years as we graduate, we want to make sure that the environmental ad hoc is in good hands and we believe. that we strongly believe that it is in good hands. And so pivoting towards next year, we're gonna be working on sustainability workshops for both business owners and also community members to educate them on a variety of different things pertaining to environmental sort of things happening in the community, whether that's the new plastic ban that was passed in January 1st, that went into effect in January 1st of this year. On top of that, we want to show examples other businesses and other surrounding areas and how it was a win-win situation by going to a buy request model. For example, just keep it really brief here, but for example, about an hour north, there was a restaurant that switched from just giving out a plastic straw to everyone to a buy request model. and they saw a 40% decrease in the plastic straws that are being handed out. So not only is this an environmental win because you're handing out less plastic straws, this is also a gain economically for the business because they have to pay less for plastic straws, although it's a minimal gain in that sector. But we want to basically try to pitch why businesses and community members should be sort of adhering to some of these policies rather than creating strict ordinances, which can take a lot of time with not only the environmental ad hoc members, but also can take out useful time of the town staff. Thank you.

Hello, Council. As you just heard, I'm Anjali, and I've had the privilege of serving as the Vice Chair of the Youth Commission this year. For those of you who don't know, about one or two members of the Youth Commission serve as liaisons to other commissions in the town. to offer suggestions from a youth perspective on how to shape the activities that the other commissions are doing to accommodate the youth in Los Gatos. So tonight I'll be discussing some of our liaison achievements. Our Complete Streets and Transportation liaison, Eli, communicated key information gathered from his survey to discuss recommendations for future transportation and safety priorities. Our DEI commission liaisons coordinated with the community outreach ad hoc to support the multicultural event organization. And this led to a really successful event overall and we are really happy with the turnout and we're excited to see the event expand next year. Also, our library liaison worked with the library to put the multicultural event on. Thanks to the library board, we were able to use the lawn in front of the library to host our event and the library kindly let us use tables to support the event. So, um, our liaison work just represents how the youth commission, not only in the in the areas that we do as youth commission, what we put on, um, it shows that we, like, have impact in all areas of our town. And, um, yeah, and we really enjoy being liaisons to the other commissions. So to conclude our presentation tonight, the Youth Commission would like to thank the Town Council for its continued support throughout the year. Your encouragement and collaboration have allowed us to make a meaningful impact in our community, and we look forward to next year and seeing what the rest of the Youth Commission does in the future. So thank you guys.

Thank you very much. Are there questions from the Town Council of the Youth Commission? Yes, Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. I don't have any questions. I just wanted to make a comment because, you know, obviously I spent time talking to a lot of you last night during the interviews, but I'm just blown away by how organized and thoughtful you are. And, you know, one of the things that strikes me, for example, is with trying to eliminate unnecessary plastic use. Um, it's hard to change human behavior and I like the point that you brought up that. We don't want to make overly restrictive rules because it's very difficult to implement and it's really hard to enforce. And so how do we get there another way? And I think your, your surveys, the way you're looking into traffic safety and alternative transportation is driven from. a very helpful direction. And so I just have a huge appreciation for your thought process and the way you work together and the way that you've liaised with the different adult communities. And I'm so impressed with the way you present your work. So thank you.

And I'll just add that I couldn't be more impressed with our youth commission. I think you all are incredible. So impressed with everything that you all are doing. And I just want to point out, you know, the issues that you're addressing through your four ad hocs are not only important issues for youth, but they're some of the most important issues in our community, right? Traffic safety and traffic in general is, you know, the issue that I hear the most about in town. And you all trying to change youth behavior and behavior in general is making a huge, huge impact. I think the same on something like environmentalism, where young people are by far the best messengers about the importance of fighting climate change, protecting the environment. So keep it up. We're very proud of you all. And please keep us updated on, for those of you that are aging out, what you're up to next year. So congratulations and thank you. All right, so now we will move to our consent calendar, which is a time for the items on the council agenda that are considered non-controversial and can be approved in a single motion. If there's anyone who would like to speak during consent, or under verbal communications, please make sure you just fill out a speaker card, the yellow speaker cards in the chairs there and indicate whether or not you want to speak on consent on a particular item or on an item that is not on the agenda. Okay, do we have any speakers for consent? Yes, and well, before I open up public comment, I'll look to our clerk for an announcement.

A revised resolution for item eight was distributed this afternoon as a desk item. Staff recommends including adoption of the revised resolution that was included in the desk item when approving the consent items. Thank you.

Perfect, thank you very much for that update. Okay, I'll open up public comment first and then I'll see if anyone wants to pull any items. So we will start with Tim.

Coming in is Tim E. Okay, I have to say it, 10-day rule. This is the budget, all the stuff that's on here is kind of really important, especially the budget or big-ticket items, you know, if you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and you just pass it. I submitted some supplemental material that in all this material was posted late, you know, within a couple of hours from, you know, after around four o'clock today. So people didn't see it, you know, so and they, if they don't. if you had a 10-day rule and you and people posted some of the stuff we can read through it i'm uh uh on number six um let's see one of the things is the soccer field you know i'd like to reconsider that because we're supposed to get a new soccer field and i think you all know that and it was that's a five-year deal you shouldn't have you know number five six seven i think nine and ten or something like that these five-year deals that you're passing you and consult and consultant fees There's no bids on some of these, and these are a lot of money. Like the elevator, you know, NEMU and the library. It doesn't get used that much, and it's a lot of money. I put it in the supplementals. It's like $56,000 or something like that for the five years, and it's like $8,000 worth of work. It's cheaper not to have any maintenance person there until you... Look up online on some of this stuff. Let's see. The Finance Commission was saying banking, banking on some of the estimates that the town puts out is three, four, $500,000 over the bids. and the Planning Commission was that, and one of the, this was a big difference, and numbers don't lie, so, if you're if you're moving numbers people are people you know there's like over a thousand pages that i had to go through and it's it's a rush job you get three minutes to speak and you just it'll it'll eventually come out and it's your job i know you guys don't get paid that much but it's your job to at least hear us and say hey slow down especially on on on big budgets wait another week or give us a 10 days just to look it over so the public can get involved. It's hard for commissioners and or anybody that's volunteering to have two or three days to look over a large amount of documents. Thank you. Thank you.

We will move to Lee Quintana.

I'd like to speak on item 11, which is on the consent calendar, regarding the continuation of the contract for the objective standards and the effect that will have on the ability of staff to eventually, sooner than later, be able to address some of the issues that the uh historic preservation committee brought up in their letter to the council backtrack i have to say i'm not speaking as a representative of the count of the historic preservation committee i'm a member of the historic preservation committee i'm speaking for myself So that's my question is, in fact, how this affects the status of continuing work or beginning work to try and update some of the historic preservation issues.

Thank you. Okay, those are all of our comments in the room on consent. Are there any speakers on Zoom?

There are no hands raised on Zoom.

Perfect. Thank you. OK. Then we'll close public.

There's one hand raised on Zoom.

For consent.

Perfect. It appears.

And we'll turn it over to them.

That is Ellen. Yes. My apologies. It's not for consent.

OK. Thank you. Great. So we'll close comments on consent. And I'll turn to the council and see if there are any council members who want to pull an item or speak on an item.

No, I was going to make a motion.

Okay, perfect. So, are there any, is there anyone wanting to pull anything? Okay, so before you make a motion, I'll just, I'll support the motion to approve, but I would just like the record to note that I'll be recusing myself from item four. I'm on the board of the Kyle J. Taylor Foundation. While it's not a compensated position, I technically do not have to recuse myself. I'll do so as a best practice. So, I'll turn to Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. With that, I move to approve items 1 through 14 on consent, including the revised resolution for item number 8, which is in tonight's desk item.

Great. Is there a second? Yes, Councilmember Hudeis. Second. Perfect. All those in favor? Aye. Great. Passes unanimously. Okay, so we will move on and get to our verbal communications portion of tonight. We have a lot of speaker cards here, more than 10. And so when we have more than 10 speakers, that means if everyone takes three minutes, we'll go beyond our 30-minute limit, which brings people to the end of the agenda. Nobody wants to stick around until midnight. And so what I'm going to do is this evening, I'm going to shorten public comment to two minutes. So we will have all public commenters stick to two minutes. Okay, great, then we'll begin with Wayne Heimsoth and then go to Clay Johnson.

Good evening Town Council and staff. I'm Wayne Heimsoth. I'm a veteran and currently still act with the California State Guard and I'm here to promote the attendance at our Memorial Day celebration coming up next Monday. It's sponsored by the Open Doors to Future Possibilities. which is an organization that has done a lot for veterans, has multiple offices, even opening in different states. It's in collaboration with the Veterans Memorial and Support Foundation. And it starts at 1300, which in your world is 1 p.m., I believe. It avoids all the 11 a.m. conflicts that are going on. So we really encourage. And I know the mayor is coming. We have a new challenge coin from the Veterans Moral Support Foundation. And I'd like to present it. Your Honor, can I approach the bench? Sure. Oh, and the other part is I have some for the other town council members and the manager, but you have to come to the Memorial Day to get it.

Thank you very much. Okay, so we will now move to Clay Johnson, who will be followed by Jeremy Doig.

They are council members. I'll speak quickly. So why are we here? We were here about a month ago to talk about pickleball noise. So we're gonna give you an update. You guys have a handout that has some graphics in it that's important to see. So the first one is pickleball noise. You need to understand two things about it, the duration and the frequency. So the first thing shows you the duration of pickleball noise. You'll see it happens in this short two millisecond pulse, which is why it does that pop sound. which makes it really annoying, and the duration is very, very short. Okay, if you move to the next slide, it shows you the frequency of the pickleball noise, and it happens around one kilohertz. Well, the optimal audio range for a human is one kilohertz to four kilohertz, so it's a pop in the region where we are most susceptible to noise. All right, moving to the next one, you'll see this is something you should all recognize, which is the Los Gatos Noise Map, which essentially says that noise becomes a nuisance around 48 to 50 dB. All right, the next slide is there's been tons and tons of studies on this. And this slide shows the parameters of the Manchester study. And it shows a pickleball court with a bunch of houses, the houses 80 feet to 220 feet. The next slide after that is the results of this study, which is a table which shows pickleball noise at various distances with various types of abatement, distance, fencing, equipment. And the takeaway from this is with no noise abatement, pickleball noise can be heard at a nuisance level up to 1,000 feet, which is quite a distance. All right, I will hand it over to Jeremy.

Hello there, thank you for your time. So to continue on this, so last time we were here there was perhaps a question as to how weight spread is this problem really. So I've created a tool, if you go to quietlg.com, quietlg.com, there is a set of links on there. The first one is a tool that allows you to view Los Gatos, view all of the existing courts, and to see how the noise propagates from all of the existing courts. And you will see this is not a fringe problem. This is actually something that impacts a significant number of people. It's not about, do I have a property that's large enough to have a pickleball court? It's about, do I live within 1,000 feet of someone else who may have a pickleball court? And actually, it's a big deal. And so QuietLG.com has that, and you'll see that actually it's pretty big. On the next page you will see that there are people who are already building pickable courts right next to the main street with hundreds and hundreds of properties that are impacted. The absence of any kind of policy around this is emboldening people to create courts and to create noise which are detrimental to the environment and detrimental to the public. So our requests as last time are please place pickable noise ordinance on the upcoming regular agenda item. we would request that the town council vote affirmatively to direct the planning commission to define a noise profile that incorporates this thing called LAFMAX, which is essentially the way that you measure pickleball noise. It's different from tennis, it's different from basketball. This is a new thing and it's important to take care of it. Prohibit activities that exceed this profile and a moratorium on construction of new pickleball courts pending the definition of this profile. QuietLG.com. Thank you.

Thank you. So I'm looking at QuietLG.com right now, and I clicked on your heat map. Where is that data from?

It uses a combination of things from OpenStreetMap.com, which is a community-based thing. It's not 100%. You know, a full is a community based thing, but it uses satellite views and existing information about it.

So, OK, to identify courts and court sizes, is that OK? OK, so it's not so it's not necessarily a a sound heat map, but it's a potential of from the courts that exist.

The first thing you do when you go there, it has a big pop-up dialogue that warns you that, you know, these are the parameters. And so it's the best I could do with what I could in the last couple of weeks. But I made this app for you to help you understand the problem and to understand it. And it's free, open source for everyone in the world.

Okay, great.

Thank you. Thank you. Noise profile per property.

We'll play around with it. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay. We'll now go to Jeff Suzuki, who will be followed by Sarah Murphy.

Good evening, council members. First, I'll disclose that I am not speaking in my capacity as a police, streets, and transportation commissioner, but as the private resident and the president of the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition. I wanted to share that I'm here because of the efforts of many years of civil rights activists, many decades. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 eliminated the national origins formula, which made it virtually impossible for Asians to immigrate to the United States. It was illegal. Some people did come here illegally. My mother happened not to. She came from South Vietnam as a war refugee. Many people in our area are descendants of undocumented immigrants, people who were hardworking, those who did not exhibit the sort of stereotypical violence tendencies that we see in media. And I say all this Because we are the present to whom the past is forever speaking. And in the time before we were born, average people who are the flesh of our flesh and the bone of our bone went through fire and storm to break a path to the future. We are part of the future they looked for and the future they died for. And history does not end. We are faced with our own series of crises, and it is time for us to do our part with regards to federal immigration enforcement, no matter how small. I'm asking you as town legislators to do that. There is a resolution that has been put forward by the DEI Commission I will not read the full title because I do not have enough time, but I would very much appreciate if it was at the very least discussed by this council. Thank you.

Thank you. Go to Sarah Murphy and Sarah will be followed by Nigel Chandler.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to the council and staff. My name is Sarah Murphy. I'm an OBGYN physician and resident of Los Gatos. I'm here to speak about the issue of a public restroom in downtown Los Gatos. There's currently no public restroom in downtown Los Gatos with only a temporary solution provided. A sincere thank you to the council and then Mayor Risto for obtaining the porta potty located in the town plaza. Many town patrons, however, want to use a more permanent restroom option, forcing local businesses to shoulder the burden of bathroom use. The town is currently paying $54,000 a year to rent the porta potty. A permanent solution could be obtained at the cost of four to five years of rental. A public restroom promotes a sense of community, inclusivity, and dignity, directly benefiting frequent bathroom users like pregnant women, young children, and seniors. Public restrooms are necessary for public health, with a deadly hepatitis A outbreak in the 2017 to 2019 timeframe in Southern California linked to the lack of a public restroom. A public restroom enables residents and customers to spend additional time exploring the downtown area on foot, encouraging walk-ins that support our local economy. Industry experts agree that a public restroom needs to be highly visible to increase accessibility and decrease potential security issues. Signage can be leveraged to direct residents and shoppers to the public restroom. The design of the public restroom should be chosen based on aesthetics, accessibility, and affordability. Prefab units can cost half the price of a brick and mortar. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. We'll go to Nigel, who will be followed by Gus Hu.

Hello, Council. My name is Nigel Chandler. I am today not speaking in my capacity as a Complete Streets and Transportation Commissioner, but as a private citizen. I'm also speaking as a case manager, in fact, for the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition, where the folks, of course, made a few of these signs, encouraged people to show up to talk about ICE in our community, how we do not want them here. Over the past month, we have received two cases of breadwinners in their families who were taken away by ICE and for our rental assistance program. These families, in some cases, were issued eviction notices. Other times, they fall behind on their rent. They can't make it. I just wanted to communicate. I know that the media hubbub is now over. January, February, comparatively speaking. It's still happening here. I think we had recent news come out that they're proposing to build an ice center in Gilroy. They're going to be active in Santa Clara County. They are active right now. I don't see why we're not acting right now as a community against this. I don't know why. The DI Commission has come out with a proposal that I hope you have taken a look at. I don't know because it hasn't been brought up for public comment yet. Nobody here is discussing it. That's been put forward, what, a month and a half, almost two months ago now. I think it's time to discuss it, please. I think it's disrespectful to the DI commissioners who you appointed to do work. I think that it's disrespectful to the community that has been organizing now for almost three months to try to get this on the agenda. If you have some sort of good reason why you do not think that addressing ICE is a good idea, explain it to the public, please. Thank you. Thank you.

We'll go to Gus who, and then Robert lip.

I'm going to start, this is a cat in the hat town. And, uh, You know, I found this guy, Toto. You know, he went through a cyclone or something like that. You know, black and white. I'm sorry, he's a basket case now. So I got Dorothy a Toto too. And y'all, I got you. All these, 101. 101 of these. black and white little kittens, I guess. And so I just wanted to get a little sense of humor, because the World Cup's coming, and you guys aren't prepared for it. When the World Cup was announced here, they said Los Gatos on the TV screens, on ABC, on NBC in San Francisco. The town's name is going to be brought up, and they're going to say, what did you guys do about it? And I'm going to be one and say, hey, how much do we put into it? I'm asking how much should we put in it? But that's, you know, I said enough already. I want to bring up ice at the World Cup. If ice is here, I know we're to have a major problem. I brought up at DEI, I brought up this, you know, ICE people police officers getting paid off, you know and things on the back of here. There's a Web page that that I already sent you. I mean I give it to DEI, but it's a fake the Butler fake thing with the flag raising down this one's just showing the Secret Service, you know speaking and so I'll give this to you Thank you

All right, we'll go to Robert and then Lee Quintana.

Howdy, I'm not quite sure how to follow that. Why I'm here is maybe a little different. I want to make a proposal for a senior parking permit for seniors with mobility issues but don't quite meet the guidelines for handicap passes. And I'm one of them, for example. I'm 78 years old, look hale and hearty, but I've got severe stenosis of the spine, the L5. problems with my hips, problems with my knees, and just tonight as I walked up, I started limping because my, for some reason, my Achilles tendon decided to say, eh. Anyway, what brought it up is also about six months ago, my wife died from lung cancer, and she used to walk miles and miles in the last year or two as her lungs started to get worse, less and less, until finally walking 100 yards was a challenge for her. And I've been patronizing the senior center, and thank you for supporting that, I really appreciate that. And a few weeks ago, it was crowded, and I couldn't find a parking spot, so I parked on the street, and in there, they were talking about that, and I mentioned it, and oh, that's limited to 90 minutes. Oh, God, I didn't see the signs. And so, a little bit over an hour, I came out, I went out, and another individual, an elderly lady, she says, oh yeah, I parked on the hill, I've gotta move my car too. So we went out and drove around, find some parking spots, went back in. And also I started realizing I haven't been downtown on a weekend night for years. Why not? Because I can't find parking, guaranteed to find parking at a reasonable spot. I mean, sometimes I can, hey, I can walk half a mile. Other times, getting across the house is a problem. So I want to basically propose some pass maybe like with hanging tag or something that seniors can use to park in areas that are limited. Thank you.

Okay we will go to Lee and then Joe ends.

Hi again. I'm not speaking as a member of the Historic Preservation Committee, but as a private citizen. And I would like to talk about two traffic tickets. Maybe I should start by saying I've never gotten a parka ticket in my whole life. And in the last week, previous week, we went to the movie at the theater, and when we came out, we discovered a parking ticket, and we were just sort of scratching our head going, you know, how did that happen? We arrived when The parking lot off of Main Street was totally full, so we went to the parking lot over the parking garage. There was an empty space, but it was being blocked by the door of Dempsey Dumpster, which hadn't been closed. Our attention was focused on that. We closed the door, we parked. We went to the movie, we came back, and here's this little piece of paper on our window. And it said we were parked illegally. We were parking in an employee parking space. Well, I had actually looked up before we left, and there was this big sign that says, no smoking, no vamping. I saw that. That caught my attention. But the little sign below it didn't, which says, this is reserved for employee parking. We got the ticket. I would have protested it. My husband doesn't like conflict, so he paid it. Come Thursday, we went to lunch with some friends from previous employment, and we had lunch downtown, and we were borrowing something from them, so we walked to the parking lot where they were to pick it up, and I immediately, shit.

That's okay. Thank you.

Anyway, our friend got exactly the same ticket. My point is you cannot see the employee parking sign. You need to make it bigger.

Okay, we'll go to Joe, and Joe will be followed by Stephanie Safari. Two minutes to go.

Thank you, everybody. Let's get more serious. Everybody's here. We're talking about quality of life issues, like last year I heard, and I'll be running for council this November, and I certainly want everybody to be heard.

Bye.

I'm sorry, right? No, that you know, it's all good here and probably like when people said a building Heights and they said that when people can't park here and you know our Infrastructure is like get more money from I didn't pay like ticket when I got it. I'm saying people should do that I got a minute. Okay, so crime. I'm talking to people coming here stockton. They come here and And we got three Cornell's and we're all snitching, you know, you heard about last time I was up here, and then Miles Avenue, and I'm gonna probably try to talk to the town manager, to the attorney, and police, whatever, whenever I can contact you, and they talk about this privately. And then, okay, relax. Well, my life's going great. You know, I would hope everybody else's world's in chaos. There's times I need to get together at home and do what we can out there. I'm kind of dumbfounded. I think those are the main things I try to say. And then all the drug users out at the end of the miles, and they hate me now because I was running as a police officer probably, I don't have a record. It was a dark disaster awareness response team. And one goes, oh no. Whatever, be all paranoid and you should get off that stuff. That's about it. You guys are great. I'm active. I'm starting to realize there's problems here that can be addressed, and I don't have anything better to do. I'm retired. I'm getting a bunch of money from the VA in five seconds, and I don't think I'm going to spend it stupidly. I've got a few more years of life left. Thank you very much. Thank you. Stephanie?

Hi, my name is Stephanie. I live off of Winchester Boulevard between Lark and Davis Avenue, and I'm here to talk about bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. First, I want to express how dramatic an improvement it is to have the green bollards along Winchester. I've lived here for almost 36 years, my whole life, and it was only since those bollards were installed that I even considered riding my bike around town. Having that physical separation from cars dramatically improved my comfort and quality of life. And I can see that other people who live along Winchester are using it not only for cycling, but actually as an extension of the sidewalk. The sidewalk there is barely big enough for one person. And just this morning, I saw a woman pushing a large stroller in the bike lane. I see people walking their dogs in there all the time. So that separated lane, which has become a de facto multi-use path, shows that there's a real need for higher quality, wider and safer bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. And even though I can safely cycle between Lark and Blossom Hill now, once I pass Blossom Hill, the bike lane ends and I'm immediately funneled into traffic. It's disappointing that we have such disconnected safe zones for bikes. And if I try to go to any destination around town from my house, whether it's towards downtown or crossing one of the Highway 17 bridges at Lark or Blossom Hill, I'm forced to ride in the gutter or I'm squeezed between moving cars and parked cars. I think North Santa Cruz going towards downtown is an obvious candidate for removing street parking and adding a protected bike lane, which would give people much easier access to the amenities downtown. And as a huge bonus, encourage people to cycle rather than drive and reduce some of the congestion we have. I think pedestrians and bicycles deserve more than being squeezed to the side of the road. And I hope the council will take more steps to make Los Gatos a walkable, cyclable, and less car-dependent place. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, we will go to Ali Miano. Ali will be followed by Patrice James.

Thank you for taking my comment. I'm also here as part of the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition to encourage you to consider the resolution proposed by the DEI Commission. I also want to echo what some of my colleagues have said about an ice facility being constructed in Gilroy, right in our own backyard. And even though ICE is now operating in a more quiet way, we know that the operations are still going on and we need to speak out and we need to act. I listened tonight as we all said the Pledge of Allegiance and it ends with justice, liberty and justice for all. And there are people in this country who want to shrink who gets to count as all. And I'd like to think that it's everyone here and I'd actually like to think that it's all of humanity. So whatever we can do at the local level while our government is bombing schools abroad or trying to take Greenland or doing whatever crazy things that they're doing, let's at least exercise the modicum of agency that we have

and and stop the madness where we can thank you thank you i'll go to patrice and he'll be followed by joanne rogers hi thank you rob my name is patricia james that's okay i wrote it messy I also was inspired to come tonight because of the signing of a 20-year lease in Gilroy for an ICE detention facility. This is something I hope would never come so close to us, and it kind of shakes me out of my complacency. I like to think about the two futures for Los Gatos. One, which is to continue as we have where we don't pass a resolution, we don't pass any law that we will not use town resources or property to allow federal immigration agents to stage detentions and sweep through the town. And the other is one in which we do pass a law to prohibit that, as I believe about 80% of our Santa Clara other cities So if you think of that, if you work in Los Gatos and 80% of the other towns, cities have passed a law not to cooperate, where are you gonna wanna go work? You know, you're right here, like, we're a magnet now. Um, where are you going to what what's going to happen on the construction sites in town? In the restaurants, are they going to have to reduce their hours or close because people are afraid to come and work here? And why wouldn't they just go work in in mountain view? Frankly, I think the best reason to do it is because we are a diverse community and we value the 41% of our community that are immigrants and we want to be kind, but I think we should also be smart and make a move now before we become a magnet for ice.

Thank you. Okay, and now our last speaker card in the room is Joanne Rogers.

Good evening, everyone. I'd just like to bring it to your attention that the road situation on Kennedy Road has been a result of the closure of Shannon Road, as you know, due to a cheap and faulty repair job that the county did. And you probably are aware that Kennedy Road is a favorite for cyclists. to use the road for a good workout, and it is. A lot of additional traffic has been diverted onto Shannon Road, from Shannon Road onto Kennedy, and it's narrow in spots and it's very windy. I'm concerned about the heavier use of Kennedy for the next six months because that's about when the repair is due. And I'm worried about the cyclists and the motorists. So my questions are, is there someone looking into the road repairs to be done sooner than October? And do you have any of the $2,400,000 on tonight's agenda to go towards the repairing and opening of Shannon Road? And who is holding the county responsible for their crummy job of repairing that Shannon Road area? And the other question is, is there any way that we can have one lane on Shannon open for cars to go through so that they're not all using Kennedy Road? I'm worried about the cyclists and the motorists. And in the afternoon, when the kids are out of school, we have a lot of speeding on that road, and a lot of people are not used to traveling on Kennedy Road.

So that's my question.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Those are all of our speaker cards in the room. Do we have any speakers on Zoom? I think we have at least one, right?

Yes. Ellen? Thank you. Thank you very much. I would like to just briefly amend some discussion that we heard a little bit about already. You know, Memorial Day is a sacred day on which we honor our service members who gave lives for our country and the loved ones they leave behind, our Gold Star families. And on Memorial Day, we remember not only their sacrifice, but also the families, the friends, the fellow service members who continue to carry their memory forward. We're deeply honored to invite the community to join active service members, veterans, Gold Star families, community leaders, first responders, and supporters this Memorial Day. And our theme is Their Sacrifice, Our Freedom, held at the Memorial, the Veterans Memorial At civic center on Monday, May 25th, what we didn't cover before is that our keynote speaker is our foundation president Vietnam war hero. General Kent Hill house. He is a major general of significant recognition. In addition, you heard mayor Rob more will be joining us. We welcome you and look forward to it. Congressman Sam Ricardo will be joining us and Dr. Simone Lundquist of Open Doors. So we hope many of the public can join us and remember those who gave us the freedom that we have the opportunity and pleasure to enjoy every day. Please RSVP if you plan to attend at honorofvet.org. Thank you.

Thank you.

There are no additional hands raised.

Thank you very much. Okay, with that, we will close verbal communications. And now move on to our public hearings. The first one is accepting the report regarding the status of the town's vacancies, recruitments, and retention efforts. And Christina Alfaro, our Administrative Services Director, will present the report. Thank you.

Good evening, Council. It's the first of my two presentations this evening. I'm just waiting for the slide deck to load here. So, assembly bill a B, 2, 5, 6, 1 became effective January 1st of 2025. this is the 2nd time the council is receiving a report on vacancy and recruitment efforts were required to present prior to budget adoption, recruitment and retention efforts. Any employee group exceeding a 20% vacancy threshold requires additional reporting. Proud to say we don't have an employee group meeting that criteria this evening. It's also meant to provide an opportunity for recognized employee organizations to make presentations. We did send notice out to all of our employee groups. I don't believe anyone is here to present tonight. At least they did not tell us they were coming. CURRENT STAFFING SNAPSHOT, WE HAVE 153.5 POSITIONS. A TOTAL FILL POSITIONS OF 143.5. SO 10 VACANT POSITIONS. THIS INCLUDES REPRESENTED AND NON-REPRESENTED POSITIONS. Town white, town wide vacancy rate of 6.73%. This is a running average from July of 2025, I believe, through March of 2026. So if you do try to do the math, 10 divided by 153.5 is just shy of 6.73, but it is a running average. Uh, historical, uh, vacancy rates are shown here on the screen going back to fiscal year 2021. Um, anything listed here that doesn't have an asterisk is assumed to cover the full fiscal year. So, July 1 through June 30th of any given year. One thing you will note here is that our vacancy rate has been going down. That means we're doing some good things with recruitment and retention, which we'll discuss shortly. We do want to point out that employees who do leave the town generally do so for things like transitions into retirement or external promotions through exit interviews with the town manager and human resource off boarding meetings. We actively gather their feedback to continuously improve our workplace. Vacancy rates by employee groups. Here you'll see the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees or AFSCME has a 3.175% vacancy rate with one current vacant positions. Town Employee Association or T has five and a vacancy rate of 9.36%. Police Officers Association or the POA has 11.76 or three vacancies. I am happy to report that we have issued offer letters for three of the public safety officer positions and we anticipate candidates to start with the town within the next few weeks. Additional recruitment efforts, focusing more on the sworn side of the house for a little bit. We have process improvements for police officer recruitment that include phone interview dates that are now consistently scheduled for the second Friday of each month. A police officer conducts these interviews using oral board questions to minimize delays between interviews. Instead of requiring 2 to 3 officers to conduct in person interviews for 48 hours per 4 to 8 hours per interview day, we now only need 1 officer to carry out a structured 20 minute interview that last between 3 to 5 hours per interview day, saving staff resources and budget. Also, the streamlined process, as you may know, hiring officers is a very competitive process, so the faster we can move candidates through our process, the better chance we have of hiring them on here. We've also streamlined the personal history questionnaire and scheduling process, allowing candidates more time to ensure their availability for interviews. Since September 2nd, to date, the town has hired 11 qualified lateral police officers. Lateral police officers, for those that may not know, are folks that are already experienced in other agencies and they lateral over to our agency. And issued $156,000 in new hire and referral bonuses. Bonuses are paid upon the new hire successfully achieving each of the milestones set by the program. Additional recruitment efforts is recruitment timelines and improved candidate experience. As with our sworn positions, you may know in a labor market, the faster you can get candidates through your process and get to the offer letter, the better chance you have of securing them. Revised job classifications. This is important because people want to know the job that they're applying for so they know if it's a good fit for them and they understand the duties they're going to be doing. in addition to advertising on job boards and social media to get the word out of our vacancies. In terms of retention efforts, competitive and wages and benefits, we did recently conduct a survey where 98% of respondents rated their satisfaction with town sponsored benefits, for example, medical, dental, vision, life insurance, et cetera, as neutral to very satisfied. The town continues to allow departments to retain flexibility in work schedules through alternative work schedules and hybrid telework arrangements, which also helps with the retention. THAT CONCLUDES MY PRESENTATION. I'M AVAILABLE TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE.

Thank you very much for this report. I think this is real progress in terms of understanding where we are in staffing for the town, and I think it's very, very helpful. I wanted to ask about the difference between positions filled and FTEs. And so let me know if I have this wrong or right. The way I understand an FTE of full-time equivalent, it's the number of hours worked in a period divided by the number of hours available in a period, regardless of how many people are doing those hours. Is that correct?

I would just, yes, but I want to kind of add a little bit of detail. It generally, that statement's correct, but we normally look at it more of a full-time employee is a 20, 80-hour-a-year employee if it's not a leap year. And then so what we would do is for part-time staff that's not benefited, right, we would then take if they work 20 hours, let's say in a 40-hour week, that's a 50% FT. So taking that same approach to calculating over a fiscal year.

Right, but in total, if you just added up the total number of hours in the payroll and divided it by the total number of available hours, that would tell you the FTEs, regardless if they're part-time or full-time or anything, correct?

Yeah, correct.

Okay. And so I'm really, and this is a very common practice in businesses to manage to FTEs. And so I guess the question is, Are we moving toward true FTE reporting? This report talks about positions filled, but I think they're different things. And are we moving toward true FTE reporting? And if so, what's the timing of that?

So the requirements under this bill is for represented to generally full-time benefited positions, which is a reflective of these numbers. As we move forward as part of our new ERP system, we have completed salary projections in that system. We hope to be able to report out based on FTE, both full-time and part-time. But this will be our first year that we're using that reporting, that portion of the system. So it likely will need some refinements, but we are moving toward that to be able to report out in total, not only full-time benefited, but all FTEs.

Great, thank you. Yes, Council Member Badami.

Thank you. So can you clarify, as we move forward, how often the reporting would be?

Yeah, we're looking to have these on a monthly basis.

Okay, thank you.

Great. Seeing no other questions, I will open up public comment on this item. Seeing no public comments in person, are there any hands raised on Zoom?

There are no hands raised on Zoom.

No hands on Zoom. I'll look to the council for a motion. Yes, Vice Mayor Aristo.

Thank you. First of all, it is impressive over the years to watch the drop in vacancies. And I just, you know, I know from talking to employees and I like seeing this employee satisfaction survey and knowing why employees have left, what a special place Los Gatos is and how much our employees are here because they appreciate each other and the environment. And that really makes for a better community. So I appreciate that. I also, appreciate the effort of the directors and especially our police chief to, you know, continue that retention and recruitment. So we're going, we're obviously in a great place. So I'll make a motion to accept the report regarding the status of the town's vacancies, recruitment and retention efforts pursuant to assembly bill two, five, six, one.

Thank you. They're a second. Yes. Council member here is second. Great. Are there any other comments on this item? Seeing none, I will call the question. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Passes unanimously. Perfect. Then we will move on to item 16, which I imagine will be a little bit lengthier. So item 16 is our budget, which is to conduct a public hearing on the Town of Los Gatos proposed operating and capital budget for the coming fiscal year. I will turn it back over to Christina Alfaro, our Administrative Services Director.

Thank you. And as I wait for the presentation to load, this will be a little lengthier, but not as long as my Finance Commission presentation, if that's any consolation. So good evening, Town Council. Tonight we'll be reviewing the town's proposed fiscal year 2026-2027 budget, the updated five-year general fund forecast, and the capital improvement program. There we go, we have quite a packed agenda this evening. I won't go through each of the items here, but we will go through them as we go through the agenda. I do want to point out. I will transition at a certain point over to parks and public work director to complete the portion of this presentation. So looking at budget process, the proposed operating and capital budgets were released on April 20th, meeting all required posting deadlines. The budget then went to Finance Commission for three meetings, culminating with their recommendations that are included as attachment one and will be discussed later in this presentation. The public hearing tonight is the first of two meetings with Town Council on the operating and capital budget. I WANTED TO START WITH SOME CHANGES TO THE BUDGET DOCUMENT. THIS YEAR'S BUDGET INCLUDES SEVERAL IMPROVEMENTS FOR CLARITY AND ACCURACY BEGINNING WITH PERFORMANCE MEASURES THAT HAVE BEEN MOVED TO THE FRONT OF THE DOCUMENT AFTER THE TRANSMITTAL LETTER AND ARE NOW SHOWN ON A TOWNWIDE BASIS VERSUS WITH EACH DEPARTMENT. IN ADDITION DEPARTMENT DIRECTORS REVIEWED AND UPDATED PERFORMANCE MEASURES TO ENSURE WE ARE TRACKING MEANINGFUL ITEMS THAT ALIGN WITH THE TOWN STRATEGIC PRIORITIES. We also introduced a new base budget methodology that recalibrates operating expenditures using three years of actuals with escalators and resulting in significant savings. The forecast and financial summaries have been combined, giving readers a more complete view of trends over a 10-year horizon. The document now includes expanded discussions by revenue and expenditure categories, more visuals, and a 10-year annual average growth rate that assist in providing historical growth trend lines for better forecasting. These additions strengthen long-term planning and make the budget more user-friendly. There are three major budget themes that are guiding this proposed budget. First is the financial outlook has improved as you'll hear later in the presentation compared to previous projections. Second, this improvement is almost entirely driven by stronger revenues and less so on reduced spending. Third, we must proceed with caution as several categories, revenue categories remain sensitive to economic conditions. Next, moving on to finance commission recommendations. A finance commission has five recommendations for council's consideration across five areas. This slide summarizes each request, which can be found in more detail in attachment one. It also includes summarized staff responses and recommendations. Recommendations include the use of the 115 pension trust, which staff agree with, but recommend waiting until the conclusion of the asset liability management study to proceed. This study is expected to be completed in the next two months. Next is to work to eliminate the vacancy savings factor and use of monthly labor reporting staff agrees with the monthly labor reporting, which we estimate will be available in late August. However, we do not believe we will be able to remove the vacancy factor until fiscal year 202728 when we better understand the analysis and reporting realities that we'll be getting out of our new system. The commission also recommended that all final advisor reports be reviewed by the commission prior to being presented to Council staff also agrees with this recommendation. Four, reduce internal service fund or ISF charges for vehicle and equipment replacement and conduct a full ISF methodology review. Staff agree with these recommendations as well. Lastly, the commission recommended enhancing the CIP with cash flow estimates for projects over $1 million and to align up the pavement plan with a PCI target to inform funding levels and clearly set aside funds for future plan projects. Staff agrees with both the cash flow estimates and will work to incorporate these in the future. Staff also agrees with PCI targets, but this is a policy decision that requires council discussion. Staff also agrees that any dollars set aside for a future yet to be approved project be reserved in a manner that is clear to the council and the public. Moving on to the numbers portion of our presentation this evening. The town-wide, so this slide basically shows you by fund, town-wide, our revenues, expenditures, and the difference, which generally a positive number means we're adding to fund balance or savings, and a negative number means we're estimating to use fund balance or savings. Town-wide revenues are approximately 81.7 million, and expenditures total just over 82.1 million. This results in a town-wide use of fund balance or savings of about $408,000. The general fund shows a deficit of roughly $549,000, which includes the annual transfer to the restricted pension trust. Internal service funds show a positive balance due to updated charge-out structures, while the capital fund reflects planned project spending. This slide highlights the distribution of revenues and expenditures across all fund types. The general fund accounts for nearly 80% of both, reflecting its central role in operations. With that, we're now going to focus our attention on the general fund. This section provides an overview of revenue composition and highlights in the revenue categories. The next several slides will break down each major category and its year-over-year changes. I just want to make a quick note about why we do focus on the general fund. The general fund It's generally tax supported, but it's where council has the most discretion on how to spend the funds. And as you saw in the previous slide, it's also the largest fund for the town. So, when we're looking at general fund revenues by category property tax and sales tax has shown in this pie chart are the largest sources of revenue, making it more than half of the total other significant categories include licenses and permits business license taxes and charges for services. This table here shows general fund revenue by category and compares fiscal year 25-26 estimate budget with fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget and provides a dollar and percentage difference. Overall general fund revenues decreased by about 1.7 million, so we're focusing on the bottom of this table here, or 2.5% compared to the fiscal year 25-26 estimate budget. Over the next few slides we will focus on property tax, sales tax, licenses and permits, and town services. Details for all other categories that are not being discussed tonight can still be found in the budget document. Before moving to the next slide, I did want to point out one area here which we're not going to talk about later, but that's other sources which experienced about a $2.1 million drop in revenue. The major component of this is really the sale of the Fort Tate property, which we are not quite sure if it will happen this fiscal year. If it doesn't, it will carry over into next fiscal year. Focusing on property tax, property tax remains our most stable and significant revenue source. It grows annually by up to 2% under Prop 13, unless reassessment occurs due to property transfer or new construction. The town received 9.3 cents of every property tax dollar collected. I also just want to point out this dollar bill is a new graphic that we have in the budget document. Uh, staying with property tax, the proposed budget includes an increase of approximately 1.3Million dollars in property tax related revenue. This reflects updated projections from the county assessor, including secured property tax backfill and Iraq distributions. Moving on to sales tax, sales tax is our second largest revenue source and is more sensitive to fluctuations in consumer spending. The town receives one cent of the statewide 9.3 cent sales tax and an additional quarter cent through Measure G sales tax. It includes point of sale activity and use tax from online purchases. While this is generally a stable revenue source, it can vary with economic trends. Sales and use tax revenues are projected to increase by $563,000 next year. These projections come from HDL, our sales tax consultant who analyzes quarterly performance. Growth is attributed to new businesses opening in town and improved performance in existing sectors. New sales tax revenue has begun to materialize, but at a slower and lower pace than we anticipated. We'll continue to monitor this category and bring adjustments if necessary in the future. Licenses and permits include building and construction related fees. Revenues in this category are projected to increase by approximately $535,000. The adjustment aligns the budget with actual revenues collected in recent years. The increases are primarily driven by changes or increases in our JPA solid waste fee of about $375,000 and planning and building permits at $235,000 and $320,000 respectively. While this category fluctuates based on development activity, current plans and trends support the proposed increase. for town services. This revenue includes fees for planning, zoning, engineering, and other development-related services. This category is projected to decrease by 1.5 million. This category includes the town's pass-through for community development and parks and public work fees that are expected to increase in total by 200,000. This increase has a corresponding expenditure increase as well. This increases offset by the following decreases building plan, check fees are down 300,000 environmental impact report fees at 380,000 reports, 130,000 and street trees at 300,000. these updated numbers align these accounts with prior year actuals. Moving on to the expenditure side of the budget for the general fund, this section details major expenditure categories and highlights year over year changes as with revenues will begin with a high level overview before breaking down specific categories. And here we have a pie chart that shows our general fund expenditures by category. As you can see in this chart, the largest expenditure category is salaries and benefits accounting for 65.16% of expenses in the general fund. This is followed by operating expenditures at 21.18% and internal service fund charges at 10.11%. I do have a footnote here, which is our retiree medical costs. I am for this view. I'm including them in salary and benefits in the budget. The viewed switches either from salary and benefits or operating expenditures. But anytime I'm calling it out in a specific area, I'll try to put footnote that. So, you know, that's included. Expenditures by category again, we're going to kind of focus on the kind of walk you through the high level at the bottom of what's happening. But general fund expenditures are expected to increase by about 3.6Million or 5.8% compared to fiscal year. 2526 estimate budget in the following slides will focus on salary and benefits operating expenditures and internal service charges. For salary and benefits, the proposed budget recommends adding one full-time position and increases part-time hours by 0.56. Vacant positions are budgeted at mid-range salary level and benefits to better reflect actual hiring costs. Benefit costs reflect updated labor agreements and actuarial data. Total compensation grows by about 3.3%. Some additional changes in our salary and benefit category. This year, the town implemented a pension methodology change to distribute unfunded liability costs more evenly across the safety employee tiers. Previously, tier one safety employees absorbed a disproportionate share of these costs as their group size decreased. The new blended rate method creates a fair and more accurate allocation. Total costs remain the same even with a methodology change. This next slide summarizes the potential impact of using the town's current $3.8 million 115 trust balance to make an additional discretionary payment to CalPERS. Doing so could reduce employer pension cost over several years. However, it would also reduce the town's flexibility to respond to economic changes. While the analysis shows long-term savings, staff is not recommending this action at this time. The information is provided for policy discussion only. When we're looking at our OPEB trust, this is a recommendation that staff is making, is to use funds in the trust, in the OPEB trust, to offset retiree medical costs. Because the retiree medical plan is closed to new employees, the actuarial model shows long-term sustainability in using these funds. Using the trust strategically reduces pressure on the general fund. I want you to note that there's some highlights on this slide, the fiscal year, twenty, twenty six, twenty, twenty six, twenty seven fiscal year, twenty seven, twenty eight are highlighted here. That's because in the current forecast, those are the two years we show the use of these funds. In the out years, we currently don't have the use of the funds shown, which would provide a sunnier outlook when we get to the forecast. Staff is simply waiting for the updated actuarial evaluation, which is due to us any day now, to ensure that long-term use of the funds still has the positive impacts that are shown here. And we'll likely make a recommendation to update the forecast as part of the mid-year financial report. for operating expenditures. This category is decreasing by approximately 1.3 million due to our new base budget recalibration that I spoke about earlier. This category includes materials, supplies, contracts, Measure G proceeds. Aligning this budget to recent actuals improves overall accuracy and also has a positive impact on our budget. Internal service fund charges are projected to increase due to fully charging out the costs associated with vehicle and equipment replacement and IT costs to operating departments. Previous years used fund balance in both funds to offset these expenses. For IT, costs are increasing about half a million dollars, equipment replacement fund costs are up one million, and all other internal service funds are up 325,000. We are providing an alternative for council's consideration that was included in the staff report and kind of want to walk you through what we're asking council to consider. There are a lot of numbers here, but hopefully it's to try to make the math as easy as possible. So just bear with me here. Okay. So for this slide, we'll be focusing on impacts to fund balance. So to give you a bit of the lay of the land, a positive number will increase fund balance and a negative number is a use of fund balance, thus decreasing it. The table shows a description of the recommended alternative, which is the first column, and then its impact to the general fund vehicle and equipment replacement or facilities fund. The first row of data shows the impact of, sorry, the first row of data shows where the fund is expected to end fiscal year 26-27 based on the proposed budget. So you'll see there, we show that the general fund is expected to end with, have a negative ending balance, vehicle replacement positive along with facilities ISF having a positive. The next row shows the impact of reducing the internal service fund charges by 1.5 million. So you'll see that positive on the general fund, the negative on the vehicle replacement fund, but no impact to the facilities ISF. Next, the impact of transferring out dollars from the general fund to the facilities fund. You see that in the next line item where we're recommending taking about 800,000 of the reduced internal service fund charges and moving them to the facilities fund. Then the line after that shows us asking council to allocate a portion of those transfer dollars for projects outlined in attachment two, which we'll also cover in the subsequent slide. The impact of these actions are the general fund goes from a deficit to a surplus of 140,000. Vehicle and equipment replacement ends in a less positive position, but still a positive position. And facilities fund ends in a more positive position due to the transfer. Lastly, staff is recommending adjusting the proposed budget to account for four parks and public work contracts that have materialized over budgeted amounts since the budget was published. With these adjustments, the general fund is expected to end the year with a slight surplus of just over $6,000, effectively a balanced budget. This slide shows the projects that are being recommended. As you can see, the second yellow line for fiscal year 26-27 shows updated costs to fiscal year. Does the escalated cost based on the 2022 dollars when these estimates were 1st put together and provides a 5 year plan for how these funds might be spent now you will see the total we're recommending to spend is about 1.4 almost 1.5Million, but we're only asking for 811 to transfer over. That's because this fund already has about 800,000 dollars in fund balance sitting in it. Moving on to the general fund five year forecast, the forecast provides a long term view of revenues, expenditures and fund balance changes. The updated forecast reflects improved near term conditions, but still includes areas of potential risk. So this updated forecast shows a significantly improved financial outlook. I've put that maroon box right at the bottom because this effectively tells you if we are balanced or in a deficit situation. Fiscal year 26-27, as we've mentioned, has a projected deficit of about half a million dollars, followed by modest surpluses in later years. The third year shows a slight deficit under current assumptions. which may change once the updated OPEB valuations are available. By fiscal year 2031-32, the town is projected to end with a surplus of $1.8 million, putting us back in the black. This forecast comparison, I'm going to try to walk you through the very first bar. It's kind of a TEAL BAR. THIS REPRESENTS THE FORECAST AS YOU SAW IT PRESENTED TO COUNCIL AS PART OF THE MIDYEAR FORECAST. SO YOU CAN SEE IF WE'RE LOOKING AT THE DATA TABLE UNDERNEATH, NEGATIVES ACROSS THE BOARD IN TERMS OF OUR BALANCING. Next, the next blue dark blue bar is the proposed budget assuming no balancing strategies and we're thinking about balancing strategies. There's 2 major components we're thinking of here. 1st is the reduction to the operating expenditures and the 2nd is the use of the trust that are included in the proposed budget. If we pull those out, you can see, we still show negatives across the forecast period next. The green bar. The green bar is the forecast as it's presented in the fiscal year 2026-27 proposed budget. And there you'll see that improvement where we have just one negative, actually two negatives in the forecast period if you include this fiscal year 2026-27 budget, but then resulting in surpluses and out years. The last the line graph here is the rough tell us forecast that was presented to Council. I want to say April early April and you can see this one has even further negatives in the other models. And the reason for this is, as you may recall, rough tell us did let us know this was a base case. If we did nothing to improve our situation, here's what it would look like. And that's why you see it so far off from the others. Next, what I want to do here is talk about how did we close the gap and get us from a negative over $3 million to a negative half a million. And I won't go through each of the items listed here, but there were increases in several revenue categories as shown on the chart. The line you see in the middle differentiates revenues from expenditures. For example, a revenue going up is in green. It's a good thing. A REVENUE GOING DOWN IS A BAD THING AND THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE FOR THE EXPENSE SIDE AS WE WANTED TO POINT OUT THAT LINE WHERE IT CROSSES. EXPENDITURE ADJUSTMENTS PARTICULARLY IN OPERATING COSTS PLAYED A BIG ROLE IN HELPING US BALANCE ALONG WITH ADDITIONAL REVENUES. THE COMBINATION OF THESE CHANGES HAS REALLY LED TO A MUCH SMALLER DEFICIT FOR FISCAL YEAR 26, 27. For the revenue forecast, this slide provides a high-level view of projected revenues over the next five years. The steady growth assumes continued strength in property tax, sales tax, and other recurring categories. For the expenditure forecast, expenditures grow moderately across the forecast period. Growth reflects negotiated labor costs, inflation, and operational needs. With that, I will turn it over to Nicole Burnham, our Parks and Public Works Director, to take you through the slides for the CIP.

Thank you, Christina. I'm Nicole Burnham, Director of Parks and Public Works for the Town. So if we can get to the next one after that. Thanks, Christina. So, we'll start out with just a summary of what's going to close. So, projects that are have been completed, or are otherwise being converted and closed out of the part of the capital program are shown in this slide. There's ten in total. 9 of them are work completed 1 of them is an item that we are moving from capital into the operating budget because it's effectively an operating line item related to the safe fruits to school work. Next slide. So, this slide is a summary of the of the itself and so just to walk you through it on the left hand column is category of projects. So street improvements, parks and trails infrastructure, the funding request the 2nd column from the right is indicating and we're going to walk through each of the programs on subsequent slides. But just this is the overview. We're gonna talk about projects that are brand new, never been funded before. We'll talk about projects that have carry forward funding, because they're existing projects, but we're also adding new funding to them. And then we'll talk about projects that just have carry forward, so they're existing projects that are moving forward with no new funding. There's a total of thirty four projects being proposed and the three columns on the right hand side, give you an indication of what is carry forward versus what is new funding versus what is the total capital. So we're looking at a total capital funding. Of 24 point, call it 7Million with 18.7 of that being carry forward and you can see from the project totals. Most of our projects are in roadways. 62% of them are roadway related with parks, bringing up the rear with only 6% and infrastructure in the middle. Next slide. So this slide represents new projects, brand new projects for this year that are proposed as part of the budget. Five are in streets, there's nine total. Five of them are in streets, four are in infrastructure, none of them are in parks or trails. um they are all one-time projects so we're not proposing any new recurring ongoing projects three of them are studies um and one of which is related to hopefully increase increasing or improving our fiscal sustainability by looking at the fees we charge for development related work Um, and then the remaining ones, the remaining 6 are design related for various things, including a downtown restroom, um, working on East main street. Uh, that project has existed for a while. We've moved that from tier 2 back to tier 1. we're ready to work on that. Um. We moved 2 projects from tier 3, the Santa Cruz paving design was a tier 3 project and so was the restroom design. So, both of those are moving into tier 1 as we move into this fiscal year. Next slide. so this slide shows the um street related projects that are existing projects that we have historically had but to which we are adding new funding um most of these are ongoing projects um and as you look in this category you start to see the um where the of the night of 18 million dollars and carry forward in the capital program nine million of it is here um most of it 6.4 million of that is in paving um the 6.4 million dollars that is shown here on this slide doesn't include about 400 000 that council allocated to a project in april and it doesn't include the 2.4 million dollars that was allocated in an earlier action on consent tonight so that suggests our roadway carry forward is actually in the four million dollar range And that includes that 4Million then includes 878,000 dollars that we are holding in vehicle impact fee that we will not spend on projects in the event that we would have to give that funding back. I can explain more about that if you have additional questions, but we're holding 878,000 dollars. So really the carry forward effectively in paving right now going into the new fiscal year would be about 3Million dollars a little more than that. The other biggest project in this category funding-wise is roadside fuel reduction, which is a combination of GFAR funding, but also there's a fair amount of grant funding sitting in there. Next slide. This next slide is the same information, but for parks and trails, so these are so we have in parks 2 projects that are existing that have funding. And so we are carrying forward money and we are proposing additional money. The biggest expense here in the parks and trails is vegetation management for fire fuel load reduction. So, it falls into the public safety category. And then in the infrastructure projects, ADA compliance work continues to be funded. Next slide. Yes, okay. This slide is looking at projects where no new funding is being proposed. So these are existing projects that have funding. We are carrying forward that funding and continuing to work on the projects. Some big hits in here are the Highway 17 bicycle and pedestrian project. The $3.2 million that's in here includes a significant grant of about $2.5 million that's dedicated specifically to construction, and we're still in design. The other big item in here is Shannon Road repair for carry forward that project construction is happening now. So we plan to burn that and hopefully close that project next year. That's our intent. Next slide. And the last slide related to the CIP is carry forward projects related to parks and trails, the two at the top. The sport court resurfacing at La Rinconada is poised to start. The construction agreement's in place. Oak Meadow Bandstand is also ready to start. And then a series of projects in the lower half of the page related to infrastructure. This is generally building related improvements. And with that, I will turn it back over to Director Alfaro.

Thank you. All right, moving on to staffing issues and challenges and next steps. For staffing, and I do want to point out this is FTEs, so you'll see the number be higher than the number we presented in the previous presentation. Total staffing increases are expected to go from 163.74 to 165.3 FTEs. This includes the addition of a deputy town attorney and for increased administrative support hours. Reductions occur in our community development and parks and public works to better align staffing with service needs. Issues and challenges, one of a few slides we have on this topic. Several issues remain in the long-term outlook. The high interest rate environment has short-term benefits, but may reverse resulting in lower investment earnings that could lead to higher CalPERS costs and potentially a smaller use of OPEB funds in the future. A recession is not included in the forecast, but economically sensitive revenues could be impacted if one should occur. For our next slide, sales tax from new businesses, as I mentioned earlier, has not fully materialized. In addition, TOT revenue remains uncertain due to the one hotel closure. Currently, what we're seeing is the other hotels are kind of picking up the need, but we want to continue to monitor that closely. And currently, we have not put any reduction in that category. The town, in addition, has over 300 million in unfunded capital needs without a long-term funding source. And additionally, the budget does not include transfers to the GFAR, which has historically been about a million dollars, or half of Measure G, which is about $600,000 for historically dedicated, had historically been dedicated to capital. Including both of these items would increase, could potentially give us either additional deficits or increase any deficits that are currently shown in the forecast. With that, we're moving on to next steps. So when we look at our next steps, we'll have the adoption of the final budget operating and capital on June 2nd for council's consideration and the publishing of the final budget will occur in July of 2026. It takes a little bit of time because if there's any changes that occur, we need to make sure we incorporate them and run them through the document aside from all the title changes that happen from going from proposed to final. We welcome your feedback and recommendations on the fiscal year 2627 operating in capital budget provided on this slide. Our staff recommendation for council consideration. The agenda item also includes 2 additional attachments to solicitation and donation policy and the donation opportunity list list for 2627. that concludes my presentation and available for any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. So I imagine we're going to have lots and lots of questions, if I know anything about this council. And we are at about 9 o'clock. So I just wanted to poll the council. Do we want to take a break now and then go into questions and public comment? Or do you want to get through a few more things? Does anyone have any opinion? Let's get through a few things. Perfect. Okay, so we'll begin with questions from Council Member Badami.

I actually have a comment to make or two. So I want to congratulate town staff. We've had a massive structural deficit for the last two years, and now we have an actual surplus. So this is all good news. So thank you. At the same time, I'd also like to thank the Finance Commission. I don't think they get enough credit. They've also been a tremendous help in balancing things in a thoughtful way and delivering results in the best interests of the town. We have one of our commissioners present tonight. So thank you. And I look forward to evaluating the recommendations on five draft motions as we move forward. I see that we now have a process flow that I'll wait on that. But I just wanted to get this out there to start in a positive way. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Agreed.

okay uh councilmember rennie i can start in on some questions if um so a few things that your presentation is very fast so i might have missed some things but a couple places The pension methodology change slide where you've increased the PEPRA to a 67% contribution rate from only 15% and we haven't renegotiated anything in contracts. I'm having a little trouble understanding how we pulled off this change or what exactly you're doing.

So effectively the percentages relate to what the town budgets for pension for safety tiers. Effectively what it does is this rate previously when it was at a higher amount, a higher portion was paid to CalPERS as part of the normal cost for the tier one employees. The tier two employees had the lower cost. the reason why there was a higher cost was really related to the unfunded actuarial liability portion because that amount was set against the Tier 1 safety employees. As the Tier 1 safety employees retire, the unfunded actuarial liability amount remains at $3 million or more and now it's being spread amongst several employees. If we left it that way in the long term, you'd have rates that look like they were 300% for Tier 1 safety. Employing this blended rate is something we've already done on the miscellaneous side, and so it's going to have more clearer trend lines as we go forward. The impact dollar-wise, there is no impact. The town still continues to pay the portion they need to pay in normal cost to CalPERS and also continues to pay the full UAL amount as required by CalPERS.

And it doesn't change the amount the employees pay?

No change to the employee amount.

So it's sort of window dressing that I should ignore it looks like.

Six of one half a dozen of another but it kind of provides some more stable trend lines when we're looking at forecasting retirement rates versus going from you know 100% to 300% cost when we're looking at them.

Okay, uh, 2nd question go ahead. Um, actually 2 slides later, um, on the recommended use of trust. Um, what I think I'm seeing here is the trust is growing, but at the same time, we're, we're pulling some out. over the years and that amount seems to be increasing a little bit so we're we're using some for budget stabilization and we're growing our forecasted um funded percentage is that correct that's correct and and so how are we going to implement this are we going to vote that yes we like this methodology and then you're going to put this paper on your wall and remember it every year how how are you going to use this going forward

Yes, so effectively, this is a policy decision we're putting before Council. It's currently included in the budget. If you'd like us to continue to use these funds, we do do an actuarial evaluation every two years. So we won't get too far out before knowing if something changes in the market or in the funded status of the fund. And then what we'll do is we'll incorporate it, like I said, at mid year, likely into the full forecast as we get updated actuarial evaluations.

Okay, next question gets to ERAF. In the past we were getting messages over and over that we don't want to include the forecast for ERAF because it might get clawed back. Um, it looks like we're not worrying about that anymore. So there's 2 parts question. Has there been settlement on those potential? I don't know if they were lawsuits or. Whatever they were, and the 2nd part is we were sticking stuff in reserve for this. Is it still in reserve? Are we pulling it back out? So, where are we on?

So ERAF still has not been settled, but we continue to receive the funds, and so we do have them in there until we hear otherwise. And doing a little bit of research on the general fund balance, it appears that the ERAF reserve was liquidated as part of last year's budget, a portion of it to help create THE UNASSIGNED FUND BALANCE. SO THAT RESERVE IS NO LONGER THERE. BUT WE CONTINUE TO HAVE THE DOLLARS UNTIL WE HEAR SOME CONCRETE EVIDENCE OTHERWISE THAT THESE DOLLARS COULD BE CLAWED BACK. BUT IT'S STILL NOT SETTLED.

SO AT THIS POINT WE'RE GOING AHEAD AND USING THE FULL AMOUNT? I THINK BEFORE WE WERE USING A PERCENTAGE OF WHAT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GET FOR OUR FORECASTING ON THE CHANCE THAT IT WOULD GO AWAY. NOW YOU'RE USING THE FULL AMOUNT OR ARE WE STILL USING THE PERCENTAGE?

NO, WE'RE CURRENTLY USING THE FULL AMOUNT.

Okay. I'll let Councilmember Huotis follow up on that.

Sure. Yeah, just on that one particular point, how does that compare to other municipalities that are dealing with the same eRAF issue? Have they all moved to this methodology away from the very conservative reserves?

For eRAF specifically? Actually, I don't have that information. That's something I'd have to research to understand what other agencies are doing.

That would be helpful in the future to understand that. I did have a couple of questions right off of the presentation. And first of all, the presentation was excellent. I missed it at the finance commission because I was sick that night. And so I'm glad to have the benefit of it tonight. It's very clear the grasp of the town's finances by yourself and our staff. And it's very encouraging to understand that we can really trust a lot of the numbers and the information that's being put in front of us. I had a couple of questions. One thing you said quickly was you said that sales tax will grow at a slower and lower rate. Does that relate to anything in this fiscal year? And what did you mean by that overall?

So at mid-year, we had come before the council and we increased our sales tax projections based on our work with HDL, which we had just transitioned to, and based on some new businesses that they had seen when they were doing our analysis and said, hey, we think these businesses are going to bring in additional dollars. We're going to have our forecast reflects that. So we came at mid-year and we updated that number. It was pretty significant. I want to say about a million or more. 1.3 million thank you um and so we've continued to watch sales tax comes in about two to three months in arrears so we don't see the impact until later so we've gotten one more quarter of sales tax um data in and what we're seeing is these businesses are bringing in additional revenue It's just not at the level in terms of dollars that we expected. In working with our consultant, they told us, you know, sometimes there's just a delay or a lag. Based on what we're seeing these businesses do statewide, we still feel the sales tax revenue is going to come in. It just may be a bit delayed. And the way sales tax works in the state of California, there's kind of a couple ways that happens. Sometimes there's cleanup payments. So if businesses were behind in reporting, all of a sudden they do an audit and they do some sort of cleanup payment that may happen later. Effectively, what our consultant is really telling us is we still anticipate the funding to come in. We just don't quite know when you're going to see it to the level that you're going to see it, but that it will come in eventually.

Thank you. And without commenting on specific businesses, I mean, we can note that there are 2 substantial new businesses that are really just getting established. And so I'm not surprised that we don't know how much revenue is coming in from at least those 2. The. The other question I had actually is for the town attorney based on the presentation. So we're seeing a recommendation to add one full-time head count to the deputy town attorney. And my question is, does this make sense given the increased need for outside counsel and will this offset some of the outside counsel costs? that we're anticipating or given the environment that we're in, all of these developments that many of which are threatening litigation, can we expect the outside counsel costs as well as this additional FTE?

Yes, I'm planning to continue to use outside counsel for the SB 330 projects. I've noticed an increased need for assistance with Public Records Act requests and contract review. And then also the police department has requested additional legal support. And so this position will be dedicated to contract review, Public Records Act review, and police and code enforcement work. and um it would be offset there's i've been using a law firm for assistance with public records act request and those expenses would be offset by this internal position thank you councilmember domi

Thank you. So back to the town attorney. With our new public records ordinance, will that reduce some of the public records requests that we've had that still necessitates a need for an aide to respond to that?

And the town gets an incredible number of public records act requests, and I think the new policy will help with review of the requests. But I do think. Legal review of the requests will continue to be needed.

OK, and thank you. One more question unrelated to that. I want to go back to the 115 Trust. So can we elaborate on the purpose of the 115 Trust? Is it appropriate to use funds for budget stabilization instead of paying down CalPERS with our pension liability?

So the 115 trust is generally set up, it can be set up for a variety of different reasons and can be used as you mentioned as a budget stabilization fund where you basically say we anticipate CalPERS rates are going to do this. And if they come in higher, instead of disrupting the operating budget, you would just simply draw down from the 115 trust. to help offset the cost that came in higher than what you expected. And that's generally how they use it as a budget stabilization when it comes to rates. Another way you can use the trust, so the trust can only be used to pay for pension benefits. Can't use it for anything else, it's restricted in that way by 115 is actually the IRS code section that establishes these trusts. The other way that you can do it is you can take the money from this trust that you set aside. You can make a direct payment to CalPERS to offset your unfunded actuarial liability. There's a variety of different ways that you can do that, targeting different bases, different miscellaneous safety. There's a lot of combinations. The other way that you may consider using these funds is in any given year, if a deficit were to... either be forecasted or actually materialize, you can make a direct payment to CalPERS. Let's say you had a $2 million deficit. You could say, okay, well, I'm gonna actually, instead of paying out of the general fund these retirement costs, I'm gonna cut a check to CalPERS for 2 million out of the trust, thus alleviating the general fund from that expense and clearing up your deficit without having to turn to reserves.

Let me add to that. I think you were referencing comments that were made about the OPEB trust where the funding ratio is pretty high and we're waiting imminently for the actuarial report. We have been paying as we go that cost out of the general fund budget. The funds that are in that section 115 trust cannot go to CalPERS to pay for pensions. It can only pay for other post-employment benefits that have been promised to employees, which we capped in 2019. And so we are finally at a balance where the plan and the actuary was to take money to offset what the general fund was paying and taking it out of the trust. So it's operating as intended. If we don't do that, we're going to end up with millions of dollars and other post-employment benefit restrictions and having nobody to pay that out to. And so while it helps us from a budget stabilization perspective, we have to understand that that was the plan from the beginning.

Okay, thank you for the clarification.

Yes, Vice Mayor Ristow.

Thank you. I had the benefit of being on the Finance Commission, so I've seen your reports. I've been at all three meetings for the discussion, so it's really helpful. I had just a couple of almost random questions. One is going back to the eRAF. I know in the past the county kind of recommended that We not count on all of that money. And so we had, I can't remember the exact portion. We used to either hold back 40% or hold back 60%. It was something like that. And I know that we've depleted that with the idea that we're not expecting it to claw back. But are we still getting advice from the county not to count on all that money? or are we getting any advice from them?

Yeah, in the last call with the county on property tax, the ERAF issue did not come up, but I can inquire with them further to see if they have any updates.

Okay, because I think each year they used to give us some type of

warning you know like don't count on this and again we have to understand that they're giving guidance to every city in every city's circumstances are a little bit different what you'll see in the budget document it shows an increase of revenue of about four hundred thousand dollars for that eraf component so our exposure is that additional four hundred thousand and then what was in the balance for eraf at the end of 2024 where we removed it and put it into the unassigned fund balance so it still exists it's just not categorized was about 1.45 million. And so from the perspective of risk exposure of money we're setting aside, which is what the county is advising, we have sufficient funds across all our fund balances to be able to accommodate a half million, million dollar, $2 million a hit. That may or may not come if we continue to reserve that dollar amount, it will be another assigned fund balance. Another amount of money that, you know, as the finance committee has indicated, why are we sitting on these funds and not utilizing them either by investing it, transferring it to calipers or expending it for a good purpose?

Right. That makes sense. Thank you. And then I have a question for parks and public works director where there was a comment about, um. I think it was traffic impact fee or vehicle impact fee some. It's like 800 some 1000 dollars that you said was going back.

Oh, yes, there is a 878,878,000 dollars that is collected through our trash hauler and paid to the town from the trash hauler and it's a vehicle impact fee for their use of the roadway. The legal basis of that fee has been called into question. So we've been advised to hold that back and not spend that.

in the and we will not receive it in the future so that revenue stream goes away we're and we're holding the revenue we we received this year and that is not a general fund impact and the probability on that one is much higher than the era so i would definitely advise not to expend that fund okay great that makes sense thank you that's it for the moment

Great. I have a quick question on the operating and just process-wise. So we have what staff is calling an alternative for council consideration. That's staff's recommendation though, right? It's not an alternative. It's staff's recommendation, right?

It's a staff alternative recommendation. It does align with a finance commission's recommendation as well.

Okay. Thank you. Yes, Council Member Heunis. Yeah, I had just one other thing, and that's I wanted to understand the unassigned fund balance, and on C-29, Two years ago, we didn't have an unassigned balance. We had funds that were in various places, like capital special projects and other things. There was a recommendation from the Finance Commission, and then the Council adopted a $4 million fund to fund that at $4 million. It's now... 14.6 million and it looks like it's going to go to, you know, stay at 14 million. Could you, and this is a fund I think that puts it in one place where the council can kind of take a look at the whole picture of what is unassigned. And so I'm very supportive of doing that, but it's a substantial amount and it's very different because when we established the 4 million, we even thought we were gonna end up with like 350,000 at the end of the year because of deficit. And then that turned around into a surplus. But still, to go from $4 million to $14 million, could you walk us through how that, what are the events that caused that to come into play and be at that level?

Yes, and if you'll allow me just a moment, I want to kind of set some foundational knowledge on how fund balance works in the different categories. So fund balance is separated into various different categories include non spendable, restricted, committed, assigned and effectively unassigned is. the dollars that haven't been earmarked or restricted in any of those other categories. In reviewing the town's reserve policy, just a little bit of knowledge here, restricted generally means the restriction on these funds has been placed by an outside agency. when we look at the committed category that generally takes council action to reduce, increase, remove any funds in that category. The assigned category per policy, the town manager does have the authority to move items within that fund. And so it's kind of important to know If it doesn't belong in any of the other buckets, it automatically falls to unassigned. So when doing some research, it looks like in 24-25, the $4 million was established. We took about $400,000 from excess ERAF, $0.6 million from Measure G residual committed fund balance, and about $3 million from the capital special project reserve. That got us to $4 million that Councilman Buhutis was talking about. Subsequent to the budget being adopted and the year being closed out, there was an additional $2.5 million in additional fund balance due to revenues exceeding expenditures that, as we looked at all the other categories and any expenses that may have pulled down on those or anything that may have added, this kind of popped out at the bottom and thus fell to unassigned fund balance. In addition, there was an additional 3.7 that was added in fiscal year 24-25 as a result of changes across the other revenue categories. 2.5 from revenues exceeding expenditures, another 3.7 based on overall changes to the different fund balance category, resulting in additional 3.7 falling to unassigned. That gets us a 4 million plus 2.5 plus 3.7 gets us to the 10.2, which is shown for fiscal year 24-25. Then as part of, we also added another 4.4 million to that number based on where we think we're going to end the current fiscal year, fiscal year 25, 26. So if you take our year-end estimate budget, revenues minus expenses, that delta, we're showing it falling to unassigned. Lastly, for the current year budget, you'll see that number decreases slightly from fourteen point six to fourteen point one million and that's driven by what we've been showing in the presentation. The anticipated about half a million dollars in the what's currently presented in the proposed budget in terms of deficit spending in the general fund.

So if I could just follow up. Is part of that money the anticipated sale for Tate?

Yes.

Which year does that fall into? And how much is that?

It's currently expected in the budget document in the current fiscal year, fiscal year 25-26. But as we understand it, we may not make it to the last meeting in June, so it may end up happening next fiscal year.

And what's the amount of that?

I think we currently have three million dollars budgeted.

The other piece to consider is during mid year, we increased the sales tax revenue projections for some of the same businesses that we identified in next year's budget that may or may not arrive or the time of it may arrive subsequent to those periods. So you may also see an adjustment to that in the act for.

Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you very much. And because that is now a fund that's really visible to. The explanation that you just gave was excellent. I would encourage us to maybe put that into text in the budget next year, because it is really important for us to understand how that balance is coming about and what is available. And it is one number that we can focus on that I think is very important. So thank you for that.

Council Member Redding. Thank you if I could turn to the 5 year forecast, it's a little easier to maybe look at the 1 in the bar with the bar charts versus the table 1. I kind of have 2, 2 things on that. And I, I realize that we're changing our methodology of forecasting a lot. And thank you for that. I appreciate it. It feels like this is becoming more of a true operating cost versus our forecast before was a combination of some other things that you seem to have stripped out. For example, it doesn't include, very importantly to note, it doesn't include any contributions to capital funds. We never were able to contribute to the large number, but we always contributed something. That's not in here at all, correct? That's correct. Which is something that's very concerning that we should think about. But the trend line also has changed, and that's probably due to some of your budget stabilization or whatever you called it, methodologies. But the next page or two pages later, you go through the whole how you changed from where we were using different forecasts and stabilization. what I'm trying to understand is the trend looks different. We've talked about our costs are increasing more than our revenues. So that means the further out we go the worse it should get. What we actually have here is it gets a little worse for three years and then it gets better. So that's a completely different looking trend line which is worth understanding a little bit better. When I look at the one of your stabilization is the use of the OPEB. It seems like most of this trend line shape change is due to the OPEB contributions because your start this year, I think it's about a half a million. And it's by the time you get up to where you see the trend changing here, you're now more in the million range. Is that, could talk to this a little bit, is that really what's causing the shape of this change or are there some others in here also?

It plays a role at least in fiscal year 26, 27, and 27, 28. As I mentioned earlier, we haven't pushed it out to the out years of the forecast. But what effectively is occurring is our sales tax revenue number is higher, as we mentioned, at mid-year. So that was significant, 1.3 million. And the way the forecast works is as we update our actuals or our budget, then the increases in the out years build on that updated number. So we've seen higher property taxes than we had originally budgeted. We're seeing higher sales tax numbers than we originally budgeted. That's driving it on the revenue side. On the expense side, some of the things that are helping us is primarily the reduction in operating expenditures, down 1.3 million from the prior year. Really, what we've been looking to do with the budget and the forecast is get closer to our actuals both on the revenue side and on the expense side. We feel like if we can do that, we kind of have a tour forecast, if you will, that's closer to what we've actually spent. And that's what you're really seeing being driven through this forecast is the revenue increases that are expected to continue and the rate of increase of those hasn't changed. It's just the base that changed and then these expenditure reductions that are helping to offset.

If I may add to that, I think the messaging behind this is that you're seeing a more realistic picture than what we may have done in the past in terms of very conservative on the revenue. So under representing the revenues to end up higher and overestimating on the expenditures just to end up lower between the two end up with a very big net change at the bottom yet have started the year with a projected deficit only to end up with millions of dollars in surplus. So we've made changes there on the expenditure side christina introduced taking a look of the three-year actual expenditures that we're incurring and Going back to what that number is and then working our way up only when you can justify what that either a contractual increase and things of that nature that was a 1.4 million dollar swing OPEB for a couple of years to a tune of about a half million dollars, but we're also considering $1.3 million in sales tax revenue, which timing wise and the amount may not necessarily pan out. Lastly, we're also considering a higher interest rate environment. So we are looking at the next two years at least retaining that higher percentage since we've locked in from a liquidity basis or investments over a longer term. that if the interest rate market turns, when those investments start to be sold and we rebuy, we'll be rebuying at lower interest rates. So two to three years out, we'll see a lower rate of return. Additionally, the million dollars is not there for capital. Reft Health shows a base case that does not consider the significant capital that the town has and how we consider that. Our expenses will still over time go up more than our revenue. So we're going to have to address cost containment However, as we did last year, we bought the town more time to ensure structurally where we know exactly where to focus our efforts, and then to make sure we do that in a prudent fashion.

So I didn't hear an explanation of why the trend changed. I heard was that's contradictory to what you just said. What it seems to be saying is it's no longer true that expenses are rising faster than revenue proved by this. I heard nothing that said why in four years from now there shouldn't be a deficit anymore. And this curve is, it's even, it's kind of, if you look at deficit, it's up and then it's back down, which I didn't hear explanation in there for how that happened.

We have not had the policy conversations that NHA advisors had talked about when they did their preliminary discussions. The decisions we make on what we do going forward will have a significant impact of what the outlook looks in the outer years. So this is subject to change in the future. Okay.

If I could ask one other question, maybe an easier one. And maybe you said it, but I'm missing something. On the staffing page, we just, the last report we had, staffing was 153.5, I think, FTEs, but your staffing report says 163.74. And I should know it, but as far as I think of, I can't figure out why you're putting 163 instead of the 153.

The 153 is indicative of full-time benefited positions where the FTE shown here includes all of the part-time hours shown as an FTE.

Okay, thank you. That's all my questions for now. Great. Councilmember Badami.

Thank you. I want to go back to the Tate sale. So if that closes this budget period, 3.7 million, do the proceeds remain as unassigned? And if so, what do you anticipate using those funds for?

Absent an action in the general fund, the unassigned fund balance is there so that funds go to that specific unallocated amount. We have not proposed any use of that funding, nor how we actually propose any use of the 10Million that's sitting in that fund just to level set about 14 and a halfMillion represents about 25% of our operating and matches our emergency and contingency reserve. And so we, with the sale of the tape building. If everything, sales tax and everything else plays out the way we project in this budget, you're looking at about another equivalent amount of those two emergency contingency funds available in unassigned fund balance. If you go back to the recommendation of the Finance Commission to retain at least $4 million in that fund, and you want to stay as close to that as possible, you would have approximately $10 million that could be allocated for a variety of uses. And since it's unrestricted, it's any use that's governmental.

Thank you.

Great.

Okay. So I think what we should do now before we do, I think it seems that we have a lot more questions. I have a lot more questions on capital. And so I think what makes the most sense is to take public comment real quick. We have just two public comments, and then we'll take a break, and then we'll come back. Okay. So we'll go to Gus Hu, who will be followed by Lee Figo. Do we have any Zoom speakers? I'm not seeing any.

Currently there are no hands raised.

Three minutes. Okay, tier two, I'm just, I'm gonna talk. I only have a couple things. Tier two, Pinehurst, I got into this for Lynn Avenue and Pinehurst thing, you guys know that. And all this talking, blah, blah, blah. The projects, I'm just gonna give you quick numbers. Projects on Pinehurst, the proposed cost is $385,000 altogether. You need $321,333. This is on page, I forget, oh, D14. And 63, 667, I guess that's what you spent. I don't know. I don't think so because I know it costs a lot more. I know that you put in a lot more. The creek side, D16, D17, the soccer field. The $36,509, I guess you're saying you spent, you need, it used to be 2.5. Now, it's good. It's getting ballpark more down to 1.3. You still need, you know, that's what I got into is the soccer and stuff like that. Lynn Avenue is the same thing, 27,000. I know you spent a lot more than that because of DDT and all the discovery and stuff like that. And you need 290 for the final. Loma is my big thing. I sent you some of these pictures. I'm gonna give you three pictures. This one's a C40 It shows a drain, this is an old picture, and I guess it's from 23. These are two new pictures, the water pumping coming out, and stuff like that. And I, in this yellow thing, I'm saying this is, The town is doing this. This is like staged. When I went back the other day on the last two, there's no more yellow. This was during a rainstorm. So the town put this up. The homeowners didn't put this up. are the numbers right are you guys you know this is almost a million dollar project that you're you're putting out and you don't it was just a over it was a clogged up uh storm drain um another thing is the the the fire the marshall early things that's all a waste of money we we pay 13 the property taxes 13.2 percent goes to all this stuff on all the emergency fire, all the exits and stuff like that. That's what the fire department, the Santa Clara Fire Department, we don't do the things. I can talk about the 115, there's not enough time, there's only 14 seconds. I'm really concerned when this goes public with the Loma stuff, because it will go public and it'll look bad on everybody. So slow down. Let the finance commission do investigate on this.

Thank you. All right. We'll go to leaf ago.

Good evening, Lee Fagone speaking as a long-term resident of Los Gatos, not representing any group. And I am very impressed with the work, the diligence that was done by the Finance Commission and in collaboration with the town staff in putting this together. It's significantly better than what I've seen, witnessed at some of the other meetings, council meetings where they're looking at the budget for review and approval. So, good job. I do have a concern, though, that with the Shannon Road repair, that this estimated carry forward 1.75 million That is a section of the road that was purchased from the county. Yes, purchased from the county. It was their road. And they apparently resurfaced the road or patched it a bit and resurfaced it. They didn't reinforce it. And as soon as the town took it, they did that just before they gave it to us, or transferred it to us. And then when anybody drives along that road, you can see it is falling apart. And doing a repair now is a good safety issue, but I believe that the town needs to go after the county from whom that road was purchased and have the county reimburse us for the work that we're doing. And that needs to be done very quickly. The other thing is I really want to support what you heard from our earlier speaker, Ms. Rogers, And she made a very important point about safety that is being challenged in other sections of the town, well, other roadways in the town, because of the Shannon Road closure at this time. I used to drive Shannon Road pretty regularly, maybe once or twice a month. And my wife refused to drive on it after a while because of the condition. So I'm glad it's being repaired, but the county should be reimbursing the town for that because they misrepresented the condition of the road when they sold it to us. And now the impact on the other streets because of the traffic not being able to go during the construction on Shannon Road. puts them on other roadways that are and you can see the detour signs on blossom hill road and hicks road and all those but it needs to be remedied and i think hold the county accountable thank you thank you yeah before we break i'll just ask the town attorney to provide and you're you're good mr fico oh um i'll ask the town attorney to provide the background on that

Yes, as the council will recall, the town did sue the county for fraud with regard to Shannon Road just prior to 2022. And then in 2022, the town did settle with the county and the county agreed to pay the town $1.5 million.

Thank you. Great. It is 940. We will break until 950. meeting of the Los Gatos Town Council. And so my, I think my plan for this evening and how to kind of get into this is start with operating, questions on operating in general. We can talk about operating, move over to capital and then move over to everything else. And so starting with operating, do folks have questions, additional questions? Yes.

Thank you. Not necessarily on operating for this year. I appreciate everything that was done in the explanation for how we got there and, you know, the situation looks good. Looking at the out years, I think the caveats that the town manager brought up are really important because even though it shows that we wouldn't with a very, very realistic and tight approach that we would not be showing a deficit five years out. That doesn't take into account that we could have change in sales tax, that we could have a recession, and it also continues with all of our liabilities for our capital continuing to grow. And so it's to me, it's not terrifying, you know, but it, it, to me, it's not realistic that I'm not saying it's unrealistic. It's not realistic that we could continue out that way and be in a good position. So I, I appreciate that five-year court forecast based on these assumptions, but I know that we're going to have to do more to be sustainable.

Yeah, I think and Christina jump in. We're in a better place because we've made some really good decisions over the last couple of years and we're really scrutinizing the information that we have. We'll be in a better place going forward with some of the monthly monitoring reports so we can track things and respond to it quicker. where the big concern that we have that a lot of cities are facing is all the other, not just the pieces that we talked about that could go away, that sales tax where we put in the budget during the mid-year of the current year and when is it gonna come or is it gonna come and the interest rate changes, there is a dollar amount of contribution for capital that we have to consider operationalizing every year as a contribution to capital for life cycle assets, things of the like. We've talked about $28 million of stormwater improvements, more than a million dollars of ADA. We haven't even talked about tree maintenance where our rotational structure is, I don't know, Nicole, 20 years? a 20 year cycle on trees where we have to address it. And so when we're not even contributing and talking about it, it's easy for us to sit and feel good about, Hey, things are good. We don't have to worry anymore. We do. And so, but what has helped with the approach Christina has taken and what we did last year, we've bought the town time and we are not bleeding in a manner that we have to make rash decisions. What we now have to start doing is thinking about long term the implications of the policy calls we're going to make. If we're going to do a capital contribution and we identify a number being two or three million a year, there's something substantial that needs to occur to generate the revenue to cover that. And that's a policy discussion that I can imagine we're going to have over the next 12 to 18 months.

Thank you for that. So basically, we're not going to be talking about that tonight. We're just talking about this year. Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Great. Okay, then if there are no other questions on operating, let's move into capital and start with questions from the council. Okay, yeah, go ahead.

Thank you. I mean, the one thing that jumps out to me that I care about a lot and I hear from the public is the public restroom. And I guess I just want to dive in a little bit to this $100,000 Ford design. And do I see? Oh, there you go. You move, Director. So I guess what I'm wondering is, are we committed at this point to building a structure or looking at prefab? And what does that $100,000 get us or assume or have flexibility around?

Uh, the 100,000 dollars gives us all the flexibility that we need to consider prefab, um, electronic systems, stick built anything and everything. Right? And so, in our intention, and I've been talking to Chris about this is, you know, the 1st thing that we want to do when we, when the fiscal year starts, and we start on this project. Is evaluate the life cycle cost of self cleaning restroom versus a stick built restroom and factoring in, or, you know, they now make electronic systems. We're actually gonna hopefully start demoing 1 later this summer, replace the porta potty with something electronic. Um, that would be a trailer mounted system that is all run by electronics and has a higher quality of, um, cleaning. So, um. Those are all the things that we want to look at and, you know, our question becomes, if we were to go to an on an electronic system, like trailer mounted system, you know, over the course of 20 or 30 years, is that cheaper than. Actually building a restroom and paying water and sewer and custodial fees and. And, you know, the expense and restrooms really in construction is in the utilities. And so even the prefab units still need a connection to water and sewer. So the 1st thing we'd like to do is some, like, lifecycle cost analysis and report back to you.

Perfect because I think based on. the complications with the fountain at the plaza and complicated systems and based on the lighting system at the library, I would shy away from anything that was proprietary or had a lot of complicated moving parts because an out of order restroom is not helpful either. But I appreciate that because I think there are a lot of different options to consider. The other question I have is right now, you know, for the rental of the port-a-potty, and it sounds like you can upgrade this, but for the port-a-potty that we've got right now, we're spending $57,000 a year to rent it. Does that also include the cleaning?

I need to clarify, we are not spending $50,000 a year on a port-a-potty. Okay. Under no circumstances are we spending $50,000 a year. I don't know where that number came from. It is about $18,000. And that includes the rental of the unit and servicing three times a week.

Awesome. Okay. So any unit we put in, if it needs cleaning, is going to have a service fee attached to that as well. Yes. And then one more question. So how many restrooms do we maintain in town right now? I'm thinking of Oak Meadow and Belgado's Park. I don't know if there's any others.

Balser, Baggerly, Belgados, Oak Meadow, so Creekside. Yeah, there's, I want to say there's seven, but I'm only thinking of five right now.

Okay. So if we had a restroom downtown that was being maintained, that would be added to the rotation with those.

Yes, and that is, uh, it's through our custodial contract. The other thing we'll have to think about is whether they, so right now our custodians, we staff unlock them in the morning custodians clean in the evening and lock them at night. Oh, so we would have to, we have to think about operating hours. There's a lot of things we need to think about as we move into design.

Okay, great. Thank you. Yes. Council member.

Thank you. So just one more question, um, on the, uh, the bathroom. So we've got a hundred thousand for the design, but as I recall, we haven't really confirmed the exact location. I mean, there's talk about it being downtown, but I don't think it's all the way determined. It's going to be right there in the park Plaza. If you could refresh my memory on that.

Yeah, staff had completed a feasibility study in 2024 that evaluated five or six locations. The staff recommendation was in Plaza Park at the existing location and have connected in at least visually to the bus stop.

So that was staff's recommendation. Did council vote on that? That's a good question.

I know there was dialogue about putting it across the street in the parking lot. Um, and we, we discussed that at that council meeting, um, that's comes with a series of issues. Um, it, we lose parking spaces. We would have to have an ADA path of travel across the parking lot to get to that bathroom location. Um, so there were a number of issues with it. That, that is the reason that with the consultant staff had not recommended it. And I would, I mean, we can, we can design as many locations as council wants. It's just going to cost more money. So if we want to evaluate that location again and start designing there, we can show you what that will look like.

Okay. Thank you.

Yes. Issues on the restroom too.

Yeah. I'm not even sure why we would consider building a restroom. I mean, given it's 2026, there are self-cleaning restrooms that prevent people from staying in them. They're vandal proof. um why are you know why would we spend any effort that might lead toward us building a restroom where we have to have either town staff or contractors come in and clean the thing it seems like you know that's left the station that we shouldn't even be putting any effort into that

I think staff tends to agree with you, but I think we again want to look at a life long term life cycle cost. We are deep into conversations about this. It's actually not self cleaning. It's cleaned by humans, but the trailer mounted system, and it's an 80 to 100,000 dollar a year line item for the servicing. So the unit itself is free. They're happy to come and put it, and then you pay for the servicing. So when you start thinking at that large of an annual expense for these electronic systems, they're amazing. In San Jose, just put one in at Arena Green. If anyone wants to see it, let me know. I'm happy to tell you more about it. Um, it was a, it's a really interesting asset. We totally agree. We, we are pretty excited about it, which is why we're looking at bringing 1 in at least on a temporary basis to see if it suits our needs. But I think there's things to think about in terms of long term cost. Um, we don't disagree. We think there may be benefit to to that kind of electronic system. So more to come.

Great. Um, and so my. My feedback on this from a budgetary standpoint, I am super, super supportive of the public restroom. It's really the only new public facing project that we're investing money into this year. And we're only putting aside $100,000 for the design. And so I know this is sort of a cart before the horse, chicken and egg sort of thing. But we do anticipate potentially having additional capital dollars in the future. And so I just want to make clear at this point, I would be very, very supportive of trying to accomplish this project or at least begin construction on this project in this fiscal year. And I know we don't want to. spend money we don't have this evening. And so I think that's okay. But this, just for staff to be aware of, this would be the top item on my list to fund with future potential capital dollars. And the other feedback I'll give is I feel very strongly about the Park the the town Plaza park location. Um, and I think that's where we should be doing the design. Last thing I'll say on it is I appreciate staff evaluating the variety of options on this. I think I'm not, I feel like I don't have the information I need to decide whether it's the. cool self-cleaning, but I think we all know the cautionary tale of San Francisco that spent $2,000 on a non-functional self-cleaning bathroom and then got lots of bad press and they tore a bunch of them out. It was all bad. And I, you know, when I go on runs and bike rides, I use the Oak Meadow bathrooms, and they work great. Never had an issue. So I'm not sold. I'm very much interested in staff's recommendation on how we proceed. But I want to, being that we have a, this is, I think, a very limited number of public-facing projects we're sort of executing on this year. And so I would like for us to make significant progress on this fiscal year.

Mr. Mayor, if I might add, the approach I took in the recommendation for the entire budget was premised on the fact that we are no longer contributing capital to the fund. So it's a dwindling fund. And I needed to face internally in the project, some critical projects, things like the generator at the yard that services our pumps. So in disaster, when all the power's out, we can fuel our public works vehicles and our patrol vehicles. or the structural assessment of this building to determine whether or not this building can sustain us for the future and to consider it as an option for rehabilitation as opposed to construction of $100 million new campus. And so most of those projects are intentionally internally. This was the one that was external because based on the feedback that I had received, it has a very broad and significant impact in an area of economics that we need to address. The reason we only put $100,000 behind it is to try to understand better what's the right fit. My intent, should the resources be available this next fiscal year, is to come back to council. Once we know what we want to do, how many, where, how, what the price is, how do we maintain it, is to come back and seek an adjustment to be able to do exactly what you just said, to construct, purchase, or install something.

Excellent.

Thank you. Yes, Vice Mayor Stone.

Thank you. I want to double down on the mayor's comments that I think the sooner we can get this, the better we've had. The port of potty since 2023, and we've been wanting this and so I don't know what. Not directing staff workload, but I think with the idea that hopefully we'll have some other money to put toward this, I think being able to move forward with a decision and how we can build this. and then put money behind it i think is very high priority i also appreciate the town manager's comments we do have a lot of inward facing projects that are not going to be seen by the public but they're absolutely critical to our town buildings well The library lights will be seen by the public. You know, we all get complaints about the flickering lights. But yeah, we've got to get the generator for the pumps. We've got to get, we have to understand this building, like how much money this needs to go another 20, 30, 60 years, or is it worth it or not? And I think we have to understand that. And that's something I've wondered about since I've been on the council. So I appreciate that. If we're done with the bathroom, can I bring up another project? Please. So, let me see, we have a proposed project, oh, it's tier two, but I have a question about a tier two project, the Towne Plaza turf repairs. So I have to say, I don't know what was done if it, it doesn't fall under the scope of this, but the work that was done leading into spring into green is amazing. You know, I walked by the Plaza every day while it was roped off and the grass came in thick and lush. And if I were a horse, you would never have gotten me out of the lawn. I mean, it just looked delicious and it looks like it's holding up. So I don't know what, what is different from the way the turf looks now to what. Has to be done what does rehabilitation look like? And how necessary is that? And obviously it's tier 2. so we're not doing it right now.

No, thanks for asking about that that that project to rehabilitate that turf has been on the books for. For quite some time, probably maybe since before I got here, I think it had a small amount of money available and I'm actually going to Tyler Thomas or superintendent of operations is on zoom. i want to see if we can promote him and he can talk to you about what they did this year that was different so i think the original concept was you know we need to deal with redwood um roots and kind of just the overall walkability of the area initially we had 20 000 staff was like well that's not going to be enough we need more and We added more and anyway, it kept getting pushed and we weren't able to do the work, but Tyler managed this year to to get the team to do a pretty significant upgrade. So, I'm gonna see if he can chime in and. Tell you a little bit more about that and what the future might hold in terms of next steps for that area.

Council here, right?

Tyler, you want to try speaking?

Can you hear me, Mr. Mayor?

Loud and clear.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Tyler Thomas, Superintendent of Operations. So to answer the Vice Mayor's question, what we did is we actually closed most of the turf area for the month leading up to spring into green to reseed. So my staff actually reseeded and aerated three times during that month to get the grass to grow back. So we have faced lots of issues out there. And a lot of the history is the tree roots, not enough sunlight. So that was a big focus going into spring into green. So you may see this as an annual thing that we do before major events, closing it down for two weeks to a month at a time. I'm not super familiar with this tier two project, but I have been told that it was going to look at redoing irrigation and laying fresh sod. So that is something we may need to look at in the future. But as of right now, my staff will continue to do these small rehab projects as needed out there on that grass.

Great. Thank you. I would say based on the way the plaza looks, I'm not sad that this is on tier two right now. It doesn't feel super imminent. So thank you.

Council Member Hudess.

Yeah, I had a question or some questions on a tier one project, the Highway 17 bicycle and pedestrian bridge project. And I know we had a consent item and we approved applying for a grant on that. So I wanted to do a check in on where we are on that project. And to basically ask the question, well, in the staff report, it says that we failed to obtain two grants for that project. So my question is, what's the probability of the town receiving a grant for construction of this project in the next six months? And what's the town match requirement?

Um, thank you for asking about that. Um, the grants we failed to receive were federal. Um, so the safe streets for all program is managed through federal and federal highway administration. Um, and we looked at actually, there is an open open call for projects in that program right now and we looked at it and decided not to pursue that again. Um, the 2 projects, the 2 grant applications that we did propose pursuing. Um, have more control at the state level. So, um, it's the active transportation grant program, and the 1 Bay area grant program, both of which have some amount of, um, of input from and the Metropolitan transportation commission will help choose projects and that applications. So we feel, uh, we feel good about our chances with this tranche in the past. I think as right now we need construction funding. We are fully funded through design. And as we, in the past, we've been applying for construction funding without even having 65% design complete. And I think the closer we are to construction ready, The better our grant chances are going to be, and we are very close to construction ready right now. So, at this point, environmental documents are done. The 65% is done and we're moving into we're well on our way into construction documents and a shovel ready project. I think that that status of the project is going to. Help us fare better in the grant application process. So we're applying for grants right now. Um, once 1 of the applications, the ATP grant application is due in June. The O bag applications are due in February. I'm sorry February in July. and we will be hearing about them in late 2026 and early 2027, by which point we should be completely shovel ready. So we will put all of that information into the application. And I know we have support from local agencies. I think we have elected official support. So we'll be seeking letters of support in the coming weeks. And I think we'll have a strong application for both grants going forward.

so if i could just follow up because this came up for discussion during the finance commission meeting and i believe you said that there would be a very high probability of us getting that grant and that it would be the decision would be in september or october um so has that moved out to next year and what again question is what's the probability of the town receiving the grant within the next six months

The applications, I double check dates today. The application is due June 22nd. The statewide decisions will be out for statewide projects will be issued November. 2nd. The local, then the local jurisdictions get to weigh in and there's a 2nd set of funding. That funding, those funding decisions are not made until June of 2027. I didn't realize how late that is until today when I double check the dates. I don't have the O bag date. My rec, the applications do in July. My recollection is it was early 2027 when the, um, when we would hear on O bag. Um, and I can't possibly tell you the probability with any kind of certainty. I mean, I feel good about it, but that doesn't really mean anything. I don't. You know, it's, um, let me let me back up for a 2nd. So, the reason I feel good about it, I can't give you a mathematical statistical percentage of probability. But the reason I feel good about this is because this project in the original Measure B applications in 2018 was like the sixth highest ranked project in the county for bike ped projects. Every project on the list above it has either been built or canceled. So from VTA staff perspective, what they have told us is they consider this project to be their highest priority. And I think when you have the support of VTA staff, you see things, you know, they, they help, right? They are helping to move their priorities forward. The other thing that makes this project a priority for them and for the county is that, um, the county has a bicycle plan, um, for bike routes throughout the county, um, blossom Hill road from San Jose, East San Jose, all the way to, to Los Gatos and through Los Gatos is called out as a bike super highway. Meaning there's a priority for safe bike infrastructure to be built on blossom Hill road. So that's the other thing that in the VTA world makes this this project attractive from at a regional level. So, those are the reasons I feel good about the project. But again, I can't, I can't really say with certainty what will happen in the grant applications.

So this one I'm a little bit frustrated about because we've been talking about it for six years. It's also one of the capital projects that has direct safety implications on our kids. Every school day, 100 kids ride across Blossom Hill Road very close to traffic, and it's very dangerous there. And so I think that we need to be realistic about whether we're gonna get this grant and build this, and if not, then we need to pivot to a different approach to getting safety and that to me is related to a tier two project now, which is the widening of 17 and re-scoping that tier two project to include fixing the out of spec over crossing on Blossom Hill Road that we already had a truck run into and was closed for months. We know that that's an issue. And so I really think that we need to have a realistic timeframe for evaluating whether this project's gonna move forward or not. And the information I'm getting tonight is very different than what we had at the finance commission. a meeting just a week ago. And so when we get to making motions, I'd like to put a timeframe for getting a report back on the status of these grants so that the council can suggest a different direction if this one isn't gonna pan out. But you're saying that the grant, we would not have, real knowledge about these two grants until after June of 2027? That's over a year from now, is that correct?

I would say early 2027. We'll know two out of three of them.

Two out of three, okay.

Then the third one will be mid-2027.

Okay, so that's what the date that I'm going to use for my motion.

Thanks. Great, so I had a comment on that one as well. So I I'm very supportive of this project and think we should continue to pursue it. And I just want to be clear that I don't support re-scoping the Highway 17 congestion management project. I wanted to ask about the Blossom Hill to Union, sorry, Camden to Union project. The budget says in Spring 2026, we'll have agreement and can start working on that. I just wanted to get a status update on that project, what it's looking like.

Yeah, thank you. The, um, that project is funded through partially through a safe streets for all grant, which we received the town received in 2023. Another reason why we're not applying for another safe streets for all grant. Um, it's taken us a long time to get that grant agreement through the federal highway administration. We just received the final agreement last week, 2 weeks ago. So council should see that coming forward. I expect in June. It may be an on. The 2nd meeting in June will be here asking for authorization for the town manager to sign that grant agreement.

So we'll start moving that project forward and then you just begin scoping it at that point.

Is that well, the grant has specific metrics and requirements. So we'll do 2 things. 1 is a small, a small part of the project is to update the town's local road safety plan. Um, so we will do that work and then the grant itself is actually going to be a quarter study. So we'll do traffic, detailed traffic modeling and safety assessments of the corridor and make recommendations for for improvements for pedestrian and bike safety through that quarter.

Okay. Um, do you question on that 1? Yeah.

Yeah, I have question on that. So, given that this is joint with San Jose, but we received the grant, are we the lead agency or as these studies go forward, will they be done jointly with San Jose staff or our staff does it and San Jose pays half.

San Jose is cost sharing with us. So our grant match was 160,000 dollars and each entity is paying 80,000. We still need to execute a cost share agreement with them. We will work collaboratively with them and we already have where we're in contact with with folks over at their. Um, but we will lead the study.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Um, the another, um, blossom whole road is, uh, uh, popular today another. BLOSSOM HILL ROAD CONNECTOR, BLOSSOM HILL ROAD TO HIGHWAY 9 ROADWAY RECONSTRUCTION ON NORTH SANTA CRUZ AVENUE PROJECT, NEW TIER ONE. WE ACTUALLY HEARD A PUBLIC COMMENT TONIGHT ABOUT THE SAFETY I'll give a preachy statement for just one second. I think we hear so much negativity about the green bollards and the safe streets projects we've done. And I think that's not the majority of how people... I live right near the Winchester bollards near Winchester and Lark. And See people in them all the time. I think there are people you know We heard from a public commenter tonight who said they would otherwise not have used the roadway to bike if if those didn't exist there, so What I'm asking about is if If there's any sort of consideration for bike pad, I guess mostly bike improvements as we look at the roadway reconstruction on the Blossom Hill Road to Highway 9 design.

Um, I'll take this, I guess I, um, I think we'll refer to the bike ped master plan and what it had proposed there. But I, it's hard for me to see a scenario where we don't try to accommodate bikes. Somehow we get people to blossom Hill road and it's like, oh, good luck with the rest of downtown. Um, so I do think we'll, we'll, we'll look at that and be thinking about that.

That's great. I appreciate that. Cause I think, you know, as, as a, someone who rides bikes there, um, when you get to downtown, it's not so bad because the, the speed limit's so low, you can take the lane. It's not a big deal. Um, and people are often jumping off to get to their destination and it's not, I don't think you need to really, you know, think about downtown all that much in terms of bike safety. But I think this corridor is a place where you could make some substantive improvements. So I appreciate that. And, you know, um, uh, would, would love to see that as we evaluate that project.

Yeah, Vice Mayor Risto.

Same thing, I was thinking about that and I appreciated when I was reading the report the discussion about the drainage issues because it's such a funky section of road where there's gargantuan sidewalk and like concrete islands that separate parking areas. that create, actually, if you care about parking, it creates inefficient parking, because there's this big, giant, oversized slot that only one car can fit in, or sometimes two. But also, as a cyclist, yeah, you're out of these protected bike lanes, you're now thrown into relatively fast moving traffic with curbs sticking out at you all the time. And so I guess I wanted to given that you've got to deal with the drainage issues because I know water pools in there. I'm guessing that there's going to be a lot of concrete torn up and the street will be reconfigured. Is that why this is such a big project? Because there's so much improvement that can happen.

There's there's a lot of work that needs to be done there and and we could specifically look all the way from back a sidewalk on both sides and look at, you know, a lot of work out there from the, how the trees are tearing up the sidewalk, new sidewalks, the parking areas, the ponding, like you talk about, there's drainage improvements that may need be needed out there. We don't have adequate fall along the street right now for that drainage. So the reconfiguration of the flow line, there's just a lot of work out there. Paving is the least of the concern. That's the simplest thing we can do out there. It's a lot of the concrete work that's going to be needed, which is why we really want to kind of scope the project the first year and then come back with a fixed number to ask for that second year.

Okay. So we'll be seeing all the design in the future. Yes. Awesome. Thank you.

forward to it yes councilmember hudas i got just a question for mayor um you were referring to the blossom hill road to highway 9 which project is that is it the senate north santa cruz yes north santa cruz reconstruction yeah and does that include uh bicycle and pedestrian

improvements no that was reading about i'm reading about storm drains and uh curb extensions and things like that yeah yeah no i was i was asking because it's it's called roadway reconstruction so it's and it's you know uh uh not insignificant so i'm uh if we're gonna be making big changes there i'm i'm providing the input that i'd like to see staff think about bicycle safety improvements there as well

So, but that's not scoped as a project by staff at all. Is that correct to make changes to the bike and pedestrian part of that? I don't know.

It sounded like there was a, uh, the director referenced the bike master plan and not knowing where this is in that or not.

okay thank you good just i don't know my head but i think the project right now is we know there's a lot of work that needs to be done and anytime we look at a reconstruction that gives us the opportunity to look at bike improvements and so i think we we can certainly look at that i mean there's a number of different things we can look at but certainly accommodating bikes will be something we can consider great thank you

Okay. I also had a very quick question on the FIBAR replacement in the parks. Sorry, Nicole, we're asking everything of you. I was just a little bit confused on, so there's a, we're adding just a little bit of money to the total money that's in that project. Are we looking at doing, but is that all FIBAR for all of our parks? Are we doing that in this upcoming fiscal year? We plan to do it all in one go?

We, yeah, we do that every year, actually. Yeah, the five bar is actually the handicap accessible. It's handicap accessible. They say and our safety. Yeah, it is the safety surfacing. Some parks use resilient surfacing. The town has always chosen to, to use five bar and it does need constant raking and replacement and replenishment. So we do it every year.

Helpful. Thank you. Okay, I'll keep going with just a couple more. This is a sort of random question, but about last budget cycle, we eliminated Screen on the Green as one of our, you know, we went down from four major town events to three major town events. I'm wondering in the sort of, what Council had talked about at that point was using that additional funding, though nominal, to sort of breathe a little bit more life into other things. Have we done that? Where's that money or capacity gone?

Thank you. Monica run economic vitality manager. Um, the cost for screen on the green was a minimal. I think it was like 4 to 5,000 dollars and with the increased expenses with all of our vendors this year, we actually have utilized that for, um, the spring into green the 4th of July. We're doing some work around, um, America, 250 in California, 175 to be incorporated into the 4th of July this year. So it was nominal and it was basically utilized to keep up with the times in order to be able to pay the vendors the increased rates.

Okay, thank you very much.

And I can answer the question about bike lanes on Santa Cruz. Class 3 bike lanes and sharrows on Santa Cruz from Main Street to Blossom Hill Road is in the bike ped master plan.

Great.

It's a priority project.

Perfect. Thank you very much. I could just follow up, but that's not in the capital project right now, correct? So it would have to be added to it?

Yes, we can, sure, we'll add it to the project description. The funding we have available is enough to incorporate that in the design consideration as we move forward. But, I mean, to Gary's point earlier, if we're doing that much work, we would be remiss not to look at it. And that is how we implement most of the bike-ped projects in town, is we opportunistically do it as we're doing paving work.

Thank you. The dig once perspective, right? Yeah. OK. And then I have just two more. One is on the, I guess, two tier two projects. Um, so one is the state route 17 corridor congestion relief project. Um, I know that's tier two because we're not the lead agency and there's, you know, we're not anticipating a ton of work on that project this year. Um, this is, you know, this is the project I think I get asked about the most. I think people in town are the most excited about it. Obviously, you know, it has by far the biggest price tag, so perhaps that's not surprising. Um, and, and I know I've asked about this, you know, in the past about, you know, Tier two doesn't mean that there's nothing going on with this project this year, again, being that Los Gatos isn't the main agency. But I just wanted to sort of understand what staff is thinking on progress for this over the next year. Because I think when I've talked to VTA about this project, they're very excited about it. I think they're really interested in it. They haven't been doing a ton of work in Los Gatos. And so I think they, and they're also, I think the, It's important for VTA to be a congestion management agency. This is serving that function in a very clear way. So I think that there's a really good nexus for it. And I just don't want to see it stall out in any way.

Yeah, I appreciate the comment and I appreciate that. This complex project has has people asking a lot of questions for sure. Um, the town manager and I did meet last week with specifically to talk about this project and kind of do a deeper dive into status. Um, we do meet regularly with once a month there's project team meeting and it's and and there's like, 30 people. Um, on the call, um, and we review status progress is being made. We expect the environmental documents to be there in final review. Now they're in review. We expect them to be published, um, this summer. And, um, we were talking earlier today about the, I, I'm gonna reach out to and ask if we can set up a community meeting, I think, for, like, August September. That'll be a good time to do it. All the information that went into the environmental documents will be available publicly. Um, you can see the results of the traffic modeling and the implications of the of the work. Um, I, I think that there are there the data being that has been developed, um, does suggest that, uh. The project as currently conceived probably won't reduce. Beach traffic through town and might need to be combined with some other improvements that are we're also discussing with. So, but I think it's time to talk about that. We really couldn't do it before. Like, the time wasn't quite right. But I do think we're there.

Okay, well, I appreciate that. I think that's an excellent idea. And I think that's important, especially given the timeline you just outlined, because VTA has set aside $11 million for the design of the project. And so, you know, my understanding is it's gonna, it's gonna start moving soon. So I think if if there needs to be any re scoping, now's the time.

It's well, and it's pretty far along rescoping. I mean, at this point it would be canceling the project and starting again, but it's also, you know, I think we learned last week that is close to needing to ask for the town for more money, another, you know, 800,000 dollars or so to continue the next phase of design. So there's going to need to be some conversation about that project as you move forward.

Okay. Thank you. Good advice. Mayor still then council member.

Thank you. So tagging on, I mean, I've been following a lot of the public meetings on this project, and I was never under the impression this was really going to fix beach traffic, because when I look at beach traffic, mostly what people are avoiding is the 1785 interchange. It backs up there, so they're getting off at Saratoga, or they're getting off at Union, and then cutting through. But what I think it will have a material impact, and it would be interesting to see their modeling, is on kind of our daily cut-through traffic, where people are coming south on 17, they see, I think what former director Matt Morley used to call turbulence, just past Lark Avenue, they see brake lights, they panic, they jump off, and it creates a lot more traffic on our local streets on a daily basis. I used to do that if I were coming back. I'd see that and get off at Lark and think, oh, and then someone said, just stay on. And the brake lights dissipate and all of a sudden you're going. But I think that auxiliary lane will eliminate a lot of traffic that should get off at nine that's getting off at 17. And so we'll see. But it would be interesting to know more about their modeling if it would maybe not eliminate beach traffic, but would it decrease it or push later when it starts? Because I think the numbers of cut-through traffic are so overwhelming, there's no one fix. But I am looking forward to another public meeting because there hasn't been one in a year and a half or two years.

We've had one at the time I've been with the town.

Oh, I've gone to their online meetings, but they haven't had an online meeting in a while from VTA. But anyway, thank you.

Council Member Hudess. Yeah, just reacting to this project, it's called the Congestion Relief Project. And I don't know that there's any evidence that there would be any congestion relief. And so I am very supportive of getting started on this thing to the extent that we can do some modeling and understand what adding those lanes would do rather than just sitting here and guessing. And I think that VTA has the engineering expertise to help us do that. um and potentially uh that would be something i would be very supportive of us getting started on because i don't feel comfortable standing in front of the public and saying that this is a congestion relief project when there's there's no evidence that it will in fact you could think of scenarios where it'll actually make things worse so you know i i i would encourage us to get started on getting the facts and the data on this so that we either can make some changes to it or call it what it is which is widening highway 17 because it will end up you know according to our financial consultants the town's match on that would be at least $17 million. And it could be more than that. And there was discussion at the Finance Commission of us needing to do a bond measure to support this. But I think we need to be more fact-based in the work that we're doing. And so if it's possible to do modeling this year so that we can understand what the impacts would be and whether it's worth pursuing us, that would be very helpful.

And maybe I wasn't clear earlier when I said that the VTA is done modeling and it is done and it will be published as part of the environmental documents that are published this summer. We have seen them. Staff have reviewed them. We have provided comments on them. So I am speaking from a bit of a place of knowledge, but I haven't read them in a year. But they do exist and the modeling exists. So I think, again, the time is right for a community meeting. So you can hear that directly from the design team.

Yes, Council Member Rennie. First question, then comment. So this project is not separated. This includes the Route 9 interchange, correct? So it's all one project? Correct. Which is a huge amount of safety improvement, not just congestion management, But it's also going to be a big congestion management for us in Los Gatos because Route 9 now is everybody's got two lanes and they got to jump into one, even if they're going to get off on Route 9 just then, or if they're trying to go across to deliver their kids to Fisher or someplace over there or... yeah there's a van meter right that there it's going to help congestion there not just on the highway but it's also extremely dangerous to walk across it i have walked across it a lot of times you have to try to look around the trees and then sprint across each place where cars are coming off the highway hoping they're not going to appear from around the corner so And biking across, it's not safe either. So it's a huge safety improvement. Then on the highway itself, there's no acceleration lanes. You immediately have to merge. So it's a safety problem getting on the highway also. And it's going to be a congestion problem because everybody on the highway slams on their brakes as some car appears all of a sudden. you know, we keep talking about a few lanes, but that's probably the cheapest part of this project. Rebuilding that interchange is where most of the money is and actually probably gonna get most of the improvement. So I just wanna, not let's go down the road that we were just on. Thank you. Great.

Yes, Council Member Badami.

I just want to add to the conversation because I live in that area. And let's not forget that there are two housing proposals in that area that are going to add hundreds of cars based upon the number of units. So I can see it being a big mess. And I appreciate Councilmember Rennie's concerns with the safety issues because I walk downtown from my residence off of Alberto. And the visibility is not good. You have to almost run when you want to go across the crosswalk. Luckily, I have somebody that is very careful in making sure I don't get hurt as I do the crosswalk. So thank you.

Great. Yeah.

Okay, just to pile on, I mean, this project is so important and so necessary on every level. I mean, we have very few ways to get across Highway 17 in our community, and Lark Avenue is not very comfortable if you're a pedestrian or a cyclist. We're trying to improve Blossom Hill Road for pedestrians and cyclists with the Pad Bike Bridge, which is an expensive fix to an outdated road. And Highway 9 is really important. It connects a lot of people from the east to the west who don't want to walk, absolutely would be insane to bike. I've only done it twice and I'll never do it again. And it's an outdated interchange. So I think from congestion management, I'll look forward to the modeling, but I believe it has to reduce the congestion on Highway 9. It will probably reduce a lot of congestion, not beach traffic, but other congestion that happens with that short merge, with the lane ending. and it'll improve the ability for people to walk and bike which will decrease the demand for cars in that area so i'm very much looking forward to that information there's no way i want to even talk about re-scoping because you may as well just throw the project away and it'll never get done this has been in the works for a long time

Great. OK, so I have one more comment and then a question. So the comment I want to provide is the other project that I want staff to just have on their radars that's currently in the tier two that I think if in future months we have a significant increase in capital funding, I think one of the projects that to me seems really achievable and really high impact. And we've been talking about since I've been on the council is the LNAV pedestrian path. And so the comment I want to provide is when we had originally talked about this project, I think the first year I'd been on council, we envisioned, I remember talking about the fact that there was a lack of infrastructure connection in East Los Gatos and wanting to do more in that part of the community. And we envisioned this sort of egalitarian community garden connected to this beautiful nature path. And I think there's a little bit of perfect being the enemy of good there. What I would like to see us do is put a sidewalk in this easement. And in future years, we can make it beautiful and wonderful, but I think To me, it seems very achievable if we end up with some extra money in the coming fiscal year to put a sidewalk through this easement. And when I've heard community pushback, I've heard it much more on the garden than the path. I'm sure there's some on both. But I'm very willing to, I want to make this project happen. And so that's my feedback on my sort of top Tier 2 project, if we do have more money in this next fiscal year is to look at accelerating the timeline on the line of pedestrian path. Thank you. Yes, we'll go.

uh yeah i completely agree that um in putting in that pedestrian path would be very very helpful for safety and for kids walking and i think things got a little bit elaborate in the planning and the costs were so much higher than just putting in a sidewalk When we looked at that previously, I think a plain sidewalk with, you know, forget about the benches and the lighting and all that, just let's get the way for kids to get across that would be really helpful.

I SECOND THAT BUT ASK US TO THINK ABOUT A SIDEWALK IS ACTUALLY PRETTY EXPENSIVE TO RUN THAT MUCH CONCRETE. JUST A PAVED PATH WOULD BE FASTER AND EASIER WITH PROPER PREPARATION SO IT LASTS LONGER. I'VE HEARD SIDEWALK TWICE WHICH RAISES THE COST AND THE ENGINEERING AND EVERYTHING BUT A PAVED PATH COULD BE FASTER AND CHEAPER.

Great, paved path. The vision of a sidewalk, the cost of a paved path, yes. Vice Mayor Stowell.

Thank you. Wow, I think we're all thinking about this project. I mean, I appreciate this at one point was coupled with the community garden. And I think decoupling this, the Lynn Avenue pathway aligns with a very long section, it might be 10 miles long, that goes into San Jose for planned bike pad connectivity. And so this is a small piece of the puzzle. And it makes me think about in Willow Glen, the Three Creeks Trail, where there's sections that run behind houses that are a block or two long. And then, you know, other sections are being done, but I think if we can just simplify it, and yeah, I wouldn't say sidewalk because bikes can't ride on sidewalks. I think some kind of pathway, crushed gravel or paved or something, with maybe an idea to elements can come in later I mean if community members want to put in benches or you know we plan that but just getting that pathway through because we do have we have a crosswalk that literally comes across union and stops right at this open space and then kids have to walk in the street on the other streets and so it's a very clear It's obvious that's where people should be walking and biking through. It is a school area. And I don't know what it would take to pare it down into elements where just the simplest part where the function of creating a safe passageway could be first put into place with other elements TBD. I don't know how challenging that is, and I know I'm probably oversimplifying it, but I think most people would be really happy with just a start.

Yeah, and that the crosswalk comes from a park, and this goes into a school. So I think it really is a good place to improve. The question I had on this is, not looking at doing a budget adjustment tonight, again, kind of knowing that there might be more funding in the future, Would it be possible to elevate this to a tier one project without touching the dollar amount?

Um, I would need to look at that a little bit more closely. I mean, right now, my understanding is as a tier 2 project, there's no funding in it right now at all. So we would have to identify the funding source and and I, I think we should talk about it a little bit more. I mean, I hear what you're saying. Yes, sure. We can do an asphalt path through there. I would be concerned about not lighting it. Because I think you're going to create a safety problem, because people are going to be through there at all hours of the night. Um, I would not probably recommend that, um, but just something to think about. Um, but the most important thing is this property is owned by. Um, and there's questions about the soil quality, uh, with regard to potential contamination. So that is real. We're really where we got stuck. So, all of those things need to be addressed and I worked on 3 creeks trail that also required soil remediation and it was quite costly. So, it's going to depend like, there's just work that needs to be done there. I don't think that 290,000 that we had initially tagged here is going to get us over the goal line. Um, but I think before I can really answer what that is going to take, I need, we need to do a little bit more work.

So, yeah, and so I guess my question was, could you elevate it to Tier 1 without, with keeping it at zero dollars? I know that kind of defeats the purpose of Tier 1 because Tier 1 means active work, and you can't, you know, do a lot of active work without dollars. I guess, you know, it sounds like that's maybe a bad idea. What I... Hearing that there's a lot of interest in this project. What I would request is that when we have a future discussion about, you know, when we have this discussion about potentially increasing the funding for the. Public restroom, I would ask that, you know, in the next several months staff, what's just a little bit more thought into what would be required to pair this project down and, you know. TO YOUR POINT, IF IT'S MORE COMPLICATED THAN WE'RE THINKING, SHARE THAT. BUT GET A BALLPARK ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE DOLLAR AMOUNT SO WE COULD THINK ABOUT THAT IF WE DO, WHEN WE'RE LOOKING AT A FEW MILLION DOLLARS.

FAIR. YES, I CAN DO THAT.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. OKAY. I HAVE ONE MORE QUESTION ON SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T QUITE FIT INTO ANY OF THESE THINGS. DOES ANYONE HAVE MORE CAPITAL QUESTIONS? OK, seeing none, this is a question for the town manager. I know you discussed, we've been looking at potential ordinances addressing homelessness in Los Gatos, which I think will be discussed in the future. We've also, I think for the past couple of years, talked about the potential disbursement of opioid settlement funding. I just wanted to hear an update on sort of where we're at with that and potential disbursement of that in the future.

Thank you for that question. It was something that I was hoping to get in the budget this time so you could see it, but we're not there yet. We're working on an encampment ordinance, which we have a draft for that we're still working on. We also are looking at case management services, behavioral health, opioid type eligible expenses that we would utilize those opioid funds for. So I intend to come forward and do a budget adjustment at the time that we know what's the dollar amount, where are we going with that funding source. So it won't be part of the budget just yet. Maybe in June, most likely August.

Okay. And that would be with the vision of dispersing at least a portion of that opioid settlement funding?

Correct.

Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. I'm now going to open it up to other, we also have the five-year forecast and other elements of the budget. If folks want to ask questions or provide direction on anything else related to the budget. Not saying that anyone needs to.

okay not seeing anything else um we have i think kind of two paths in front of us two similar actually yeah uh uh director alfaro would you mind laying out what what you need from the council uh yes thank you for that opportunity to do that um in some of the notes i've taken uh for this evening um and then looking at the recommendations provided on slide 51 specifically number two provide direction and recommendations on any changes for the final budget To me, this is where we could consider the alternative that was presented in the staff report and as part of the presentation this evening. In addition to the alternative, other items I've heard were related to including the fund balance discussion that I described this evening to provide the history on how the unassigned fund balance was put together. And then the other item I have is related, which is probably less to change the budget, but I think more to bring information back as part of the The final budget hearing and adoption related to ERAF and how other agencies within the county are treating those funds. That's for item two. For item three, we are looking for direction from council on finance commissions, recommendations. Effectively, what we would do, how I would envision this is we would take direction received this evening and we come back as part of a final. Those would be formal recommended actions for council to take. based on the direction we receive.

Great, thank you very much. Yes, Council Member Hudes. There's a lot there and I'm wondering if it would be valuable to just get a motion going on the budget. So on the fundamental part, I move to adopt the FY26-27 proposed operating and capital budget and include the following four items, which are listed.

Just provide clarification. We are not adopting the budget this evening. If we're conducting the public hearing to just want to make sure we're that motion would come on the June 2nd meeting to adopt the budget.

Okay. Um, so. The motion would be to recommend. The budget as proposed and with the following 4 items. Um. Reduction of vehicle and equipment fund internal service fund charges by 1.5 million consistent with finance commission's recommendations. Transfer out 811.334 of reduced general fund internal service fund charges from the general fund of the facilities internal service funds for projects identified in attachment two. approve a budget increase of 335,083 for the facilities internal service fund budget for projects identified for FY2627 in attachment two, and finally approve a budget increase of 134,368 for the following three contracts in public works that have costs have come in higher than currently budgeted. Pacific Water Art, Throne Restrooms, Specialized Elevator Corporation and Field Turf USA.

And just to clarify, I actually think it's four contracts. I think you read two of them together. Yeah, so we have Throne is one, Specialized Elevator is one, Field Turf is one, Pacific Water is one.

Yeah, as listed in that. OK, so four contracts. It says three, but. OK. Is there a second?

Yes, Council Member Badami.

I'll second.

OK, great. And so the one thing I didn't hear in that was the first, did you, can you tell me is there a difference between the alternative

A difference between...

Sorry, what you just said is, did you, are you referencing the alternative for council consideration from staff?

Yes. Okay. And because I, some of those will take care of some of the finance commission recommendations. So when we get to that, I think it'll be simpler. The motions that'll come from that part of it.

Okay. Yes, Vice Mayor Risto.

Okay, I have a question. So since the motion called things out, and it didn't call out everything in the alternative, the first item, the estimated change to your budget with the vehicle replacement fund. Oh, I see that was that's an addition there. That's just showing all of the changes.

I think that explains the impact of those, but I don't know that that needs to be part of the motion. I can add that sentence.

Okay, I'm sorry. That was probably the start, and then it showed each of the changes. All right.

Correct. So just to be clear, so you're making the motion for the alternative, the staff alternative? Yes. Okay.

Okay.

Okay. Any comments, further comments on that? Seeing none, I will call the question. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? None. Passes unanimously. Okay. It sounded like, did you have another motion?

I do. Please. And this is regarding the use of the unassigned fund balance. Yeah, go ahead. I'd like to explain it a little bit first. Anticipated transaction of four Tate, I believe it will result somewhere around $3 million in additional funds in the unassigned fund balance. I think that was confirmed by the director. So I'd like to address the use of those funds in this budget. I've reached out to a large number of people, actually thousands of Los Gatos voters, and I did not have an issue. I didn't get into trouble on the Brown Act in that I didn't reach out to fellow council members, but I asked them, what do they think about this? And I asked them to take a survey And most of the residents didn't know about the possible sale. And so I thought it was important to inform them and ask their opinion. The survey is my own. It's not done by the town. It's not been statistically validated, although I asked two statisticians to help me understand the responses so I could evaluate it. But here's the results of reaching out on this. With over 200 responses so far, a majority, 64%, favored using the proceeds for a tangible asset, such as a capital project to build a new community center, sports courts, bicycle and pedestrian improvements, or town-built affordable housing. This is in contrast to 25% who favored using the proceeds for deferred maintenance of town properties and just 12% choosing the proceeds to support ongoing operations of the town. 57% say what happens with the proceeds affects their opinion about whether to sell or not sell. So in asking the question and getting it further information, if the council decided to sell and use the approach for a tangible asset, presumably 79% would be supportive of the council's action. I want to kind of summarize this and a note that I got from a resident. who said, the use of long-term assets to meet short-term needs, operations or deferred maintenance, is a dying strategy. It's appropriate when you're nearing end of life, but less appropriate for an ongoing concern such as the town of Los Gatos. And to be specific, the proceeds should be used to serve the long-term needs of the community. And so with that, I want to make a motion. And that is I move to allocate $3 million of unassigned fund balance to a community benefit capital fund which is committed for use to provide new capital projects of direct long-term community benefit, such as, but not limited to, a new community center, sports courts, park, bicycle and pedestrian improvements, or affordable housing, and shall not be utilized for operating costs or deferred maintenance or such. And that funding shall accumulate interest until such time as it is expended. And so that's the motion to take 3 million of the 14 million in the unassigned fund balance and dedicate it to long-term asset.

Council Member Redding. Question in in I know we want a second, but in working up to a second. The first thing that strikes me is you're moving money before we've actually sold anything. Should your motion include an if statement about? You know the sale occurring or if the sale doesn't occur or something to that sort.

I would be comfortable with including that. I'm just reacting to the fact that it is in the budget, assumed to be unassigned. And so that's kind of where it is now, but I would be comfortable with including that.

Is there a second? Yeah.

I have a question given that, you know, I haven't been in any of the Tate discussions, so I don't know if you actually have a number or not. I'm recused from this. But to specifically call out $3 million when we don't know when or if the property will sell, I know that now you're saying that this is contingent upon the sale. Would it also be, does it have to say $3 million? I mean, how do you know what it's going to sell for?

Well, I could change the motion to be for the sales price of that property, but I'm not sure if the town attorney would be comfortable with that.

Or the proceeds, because there may be costs?

Yeah, the proceeds after...

So council member Aristo is recused from conversations about selling for Tate. So I think we better to state the motion as any realization or any anticipated realization of $3 million would be allocated for a specific purpose.

Okay, I'm comfortable with making that change in the language.

Well, what if it's not $3 million?

If I may, because we're skirting around an issue that I have a lot of concerns about, which is the conflict of interest that a council member has. If you want to allocate 3M dollars out of unassigned fund balance. To a specific use as recommended by council, where he does just allocate 3M dollars from the unassigned fund balance and don't attach it to a contingent action. If that action doesn't occur, you always can reverse that. But if that's what your intent is, it'd be cleaner just to talk about the allocation decision of unassigned fund balance and not tying it to an item that is potential conflict for a council member.

So if I could kind of go back to what I stated in the first place, it was to allocate 3 million of unassigned fund balance to a community benefit capital fund. Doesn't state where that money comes from.

Yes, Council Member Redding.

I'll second it so we can move on with the understanding that if it's less than that, we may change the number or if it doesn't occur, we may change the number, but that doesn't need to be in the motion. That's an obvious understood. Yes. Yes.

So if it's more than that, can we still change the number?

My guess is it would take another motion to modify that number at a later time, correct?

If I may, through the mayor, I don't think you need to talk about how you make the changes. It's the same as anything in your budget. If you decide to change the number for whatever reason in some future time, you can up, down, or the specific uses for which you desire. The other part is you mentioned the word committed funds. which I believe will then have to do some type of municipal code change to make it committed as opposed to assigned. So your motion would also presume that potential action.

Yeah, I mean, I specifically thought about restricted, committed, assigned, and I believe the only way to have this solely at the direction of the Council is to make it committed. And so that's the language that I proposed. Yes, Councilmember Domi, then Vice Mayor Risto.

With the further discussion, I'll be supporting the motion.

I have a question. Why are we doing this now? Can could this wait until a sale that I'm not privy to is over and then I can have a discussion about the use of the money or what? Or is this important that it happened tonight?

I think that question better. It's not coming from staff.

Okay. I mean, I don't understand why we don't just wait until we know what's happening.

But a few reasons One it is a budgetary matter and it's relevant and it is stated in the 27 budget And that's what we're considering tonight secondly It's important to understand the use of funds when deciding whether to sell an asset and I The, as I mentioned from the public, 57% say that the proceeds, what happens with the proceeds affects their opinion about whether to sell it or not sell it. And so I think it's important for us to understand that. Whether the proceeds would just be used for any purpose Once you've made the decision to sell, you've made that decision and you can't reverse that. So those are some of the reasons. I think the other one is by considering it now, it gives you, Vice Mayor, the opportunity to participate in this process only concerning the budgetary issue and the use of the funds. And so those are some reasons why I think it's important to do it now. Yes, Vice Mayor Risto.

Okay. Well, thank you. I mean, I certainly, certainly agree that this should any proceeds that come from a sale of an asset should definitely go into a public facing public benefit. I have no issue with that. And so assuming I'm not recused from this discussion, because we're being very vague, I'll be supporting the motion.

Okay. Great. And can you, um, uh, council member, uh, uh, you just, can you restate the what's included, what's excluded?

Sure. I move to allocate $3 million of unassigned fund balance to a community benefit capital fund, which is committed for use to provide new capital projects of direct long-term community benefit, such as, but not limited to, a new community center, sports courts, park, bicycle and pedestrian improvements, or affordable housing. And shall not be utilized for operating costs or deferred maintenance or such. And that fund shall accumulate interest until such time as it is expended.

Okay, now we have it here. Thank you very much. Town clerks. Okay, are there other comments on this? So I'll just say, I think the elephant here being I'm concerned about parking this money. That's my main concern with allocating $3 million. You know, we are... years and years and years away from a new community center as supportive of the idea as I am. Um, and so that would be my, I know it's, it's, you know, not limited to, I have the same thoughts as vice mayor Risto on the money should go to a community asset or community, you know, projects. Um, but I'll just voice here that, that I think parking the money for use on a future community center is not a good use of the money, but I'll support the motion. Okay. I will call the question. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Passes unanimously. Yes, Councilmember Rennie.

So I didn't bring this up yet, and we kind of already voted through it by the acceptance of the budget that staff is proposing, but a big nit I have is under issues and challenges page, Um, half a measure G was not going to G far. Um, I brought this up a few years ago because. Even though measure G was a general. general whatever the right term is.

General tax.

General tax and we can use it for whatever we want. What we wrote was it was going to be used for capital projects and ongoing operational items such as police to keep it going and we've always had this need to put money into capital so we had made what I thought was A VOTE BY COUNCIL, I DON'T KNOW IF YOU WANT TO CALL A RESOLUTION, BUT IT WAS AN ONGOING THAT HALF OF MEASURE G WOULD GO TOWARDS CAPITAL BECAUSE IT MATCHED THE WORDING PROMISE WE MADE the people when that when it was passed so again that's why it's a net to me because we said we're going to use it for these things and it makes it feel to me more like we're keeping our promise so now in this budget no longer you know putting any towards capital which was kind of half of what we promised we would do with that That's kind of the reason I brought it up, but then even a process question, I felt like it should have been a bigger deal where we voted specifically on this item versus it sort of hidden somewhere in the budget notes that we just voted on. So we voted to do it already. But it wasn't so I'm saying this to make it more loud and clear what we've done. We have voted to. no longer, at least in this budget, it'll probably continue into the future, kind of keep that half promise.

Yes, Council Member Hudeaus. If I could just ask a clarifying question, is that $1.3 million?

On the issues and challenges it's listed as 0.6 so I think the total is 1.3 and normally half of that 0.6 would have gone into GFAR and half into operating so the whole amount is probably the 1.3 you're talking about.

So, I just had a comment, which is that, again, we're sitting on, you know, a balance of 14Million in the unassigned and obviously we're going to need to come back and look at capital because it's not funded. And so. I assume that part of what we're doing is waiting for the studies from the consultants and the ALM study and so that we can really weigh the value of taking other actions on the pension liability to do that. So am I correct, Town Manager, that we're not done with capital and that we're probably gonna come back to something that might include this Measure G fund?

That's correct. And I think the action the council took tonight will change some of my thoughts about recommendations with regards to capital funds and as well as our pension trust.

Okay. Are there any more motions to be made on the budget? Yes.

I think there's some related to the recommendations of the Finance Commission. So I don't know if we could step through that. Some of them have been covered, but I don't think all of them have. Is it possible to take some further input and motions on those recommendations? As long as they're quick. Well, they were pretty long recommendations from the Finance Commission.

I did summarize them. I'm just trying to find the slide.

Right.

Yes, exactly. And so I didn't see any areas where staff disagreed with in a major way. Is that right?

No, the only clarification was for the removal of the vacancy factor that we would need more time to figure out if that was feasible.

Right. So do you need any further direction from Council on these Finance Commission recommendations?

I don't think we're making a recommendation on the Section 115 trust at this point. Council wanted to have the studies first, and that's one of the areas I want to change my recommendation to Council.

Okay, so to be clear, do you need any more direction from the council this evening?

I think, are we generally recommending what the commission, yeah, we're generally recommending what the commission recommended with the exception of the vacancy savings and the pension and the decision on the 115 trust until a later discussion. Okay. Yes, Vice Mayor Stowe.

Then I'll move to support the staff response to the finance commission recommendations.

Excellent. Is there a second? Council Member Rennie? Second. Perfect. Any questions or comments? Seeing none, I will call the question. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. No. Okay, so it passes four to one. And okay, we will take a very quick bio, do we have one more thing? Oh, okay, our donation policy, okay. Yes, Vice Mayor Stowe?

Yes. I will approve the FY26-27 list of potential donations consistent with the town's donation policy.

Excellent. Second. Second from Rennie. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Passes unanimously.

Excellent.

Okay. So we're going to take a five or less minute break because I would like to try to get us out by midnight.

back together and i'm going to look to council member bajami regarding the last item thank you so um it's late and i actually had quite a bit of paperwork here thinking we were individually going to go through all these draft motions and a little bit more detail so i make a motion to reconsider the vote on item number 16.

OK, because honest mistake will reopen it. No problem. So back to item 16, did you want to make comments?

I do. So I had a lot to say about.

I think if you're going to do a motion to reconsider, we need a second and then a vote of the council to reconsider. OK. Is it one specific motion or all of them?

It would be I would vote no to accept all of staff's recommendations because there's two I don't agree with.

Okay, so I'll second.

Yeah, and we'll take a vote to reconsider. All those in favor? Aye. Okay, passed unanimously. Go ahead. Yeah.

Okay, so again, due to the late hour, I didn't agree with staff's recommendation on draft motion number 1. I'd like to have the money applied immediately. This was a unanimous and firm decision by the finance commission. Actually, commissioner, the chair Ashby monk was the 1 that made this direction that. We shouldn't wait on this. We've been talking about this for 2 years now. So, with that, I did not agree with waiting also on the capital improvement program draft motion number 5. I'm concerned about the PCI target of. 80 if if we need to really use such a high number so i had wanted to have a discussion maybe on a better target that may be even lowering it to 75 so with that with those two i did not agree with staff recommendations so i will now be voting no

Okay. To the clerk, is it possible to just have, being that this was an honest mistake, have Council Member Badami's votes reflect no on those two pieces and then, you know, close the item? Or do we need to take those votes again? And you just tell me.

As I recall, it was one motion, and then there was a motion to amend it, and then there was a third motion to amend it further. Right. And so the vote could be retaken on the third motion, which was the Finance Commission recommendations.

Perfect. OK. So let's take that vote again. There was a motion from Vice Mayor Risto to approve staff's responses to the Finance Commission's recommendations that had a second from Rennie, I think. Rennie, are you willing to second that motion again? Perfect. And we will take the vote.

All those in favor? Can we have a discussion?

Aye.

Sure. Sure. OK. so i i did vote no originally my concern um is so on the 115 trust um i feel that we are moving in the right direction and i do feel that it would be um that we need to somehow signal that we're moving in that direction, but that we're waiting for the ALM study to come in before we finalize that one. So as it's currently written, the staff's recommendation almost gets there for me. And so I wanted to just get those comments on the record. The one that I had the biggest issue with was the language on the PCI. And it seemed to me that it was a bit ambiguous in that it stated that the language on the PCI that there would be a PCI of 80 or a spending capacity limit to spend on road servicing and repair and I didn't really understand that and so for me a better motion would be just to have a PCI target and I would be comfortable in supporting a target of 75 rather than 80. We rapidly went from the 60s to 82. And so I think that having a target of 75 is more appropriate. But that's an explanation for why I voted.

OK, understood. I'm personally not going to change my vote on this item. And so unless I hear someone else who wants to change their vote, I will call the question again.

Yes, Council Member Rennie. If I could just make a comment. I think one of the items about the 115, I'm trying to find it here, but it's late. What I read in there was, yes, we want to move forward with this, but the motion also talked about figuring out the allocation between direct contribution to CalPERS versus, I think, dividing it into different buckets. And one bucket may be for... BUDGET RELIEF AND THERE WAS A THIRD, I CAN'T REMEMBER, BUT ANYWAY, I DIDN'T GET THE WE NEED TO DO IT RIGHT AWAY, WE NEED TO HURRY UP AND FIGURE OUT HOW WE WANT TO ALLOCATE IT IS WHAT I GOT FROM IT.

GREAT. BADAMI AND THEN RISTO.

So in reading the motion, they specifically said June of 2026 and not wait for any further studies because we've been talking about this for two years now and we keep talking about it and talking about it and we can get more studies. So I watched the finance commission meeting and the message was very clear from chair Monk, do it now.

Yes.

yeah i'll just say i've sat on the finance commission and they don't make policy they make recommendations and i appreciate their perspective and given that when this recommendation was made i think about a year ago and our town manager had the discussion that we needed more time and the last time they or two times ago before when they made the recommendation it was we want to get the ALM study information and wait until at least June, but they continued with each meeting to keep making that motion and say, do it now. Then they said, do it June. I hear their message and I just feel like we need to make it at the right time for us. So I'm sticking with the staff response. And then in terms of the PCI, without knowing what that changes for funding i'm not going to pick an arbitrary target i don't know what our commitments are to what we have to spend under sb1 and measure b and i think as we go forward with talking about capital we can find out what the implications are of changing a pcr target and what the costs are and what the consequences are in the future so i'm sticking with my vote great i will call the question all those in favor

Aye. Any opposed? No. Passes three to two. Thank you very much. We'll move back to item 17. And I did mean to give the compliment to our director. Thank you for the most digestible budget that I've seen since being on the council. Thank you very much. It was very clear and very easy to understand. I'll turn things over to our chief or our town manager to begin the staff recommendations, the presentations.

thank you mr mayor the chief will go into a more detailed presentation but i just want to introduce this item across california you're seeing cities struggle to be able to provide the level of services that their community desires with the increasing cost on a variety of fronts public safety is one of those areas cities that are both known to be stable with good long-term outlooks are really looking at alternatives to provide their services in the most economical factor We're seeing that also in Santa Clara County. We're doubly seeing it with the impacts of the county and the county's approach to cost recovery where they're going out to all their jurisdictions that are paying for bills and trying to get the highest level of recovery. We've been very successful over the last 30 years in the West Valley cities, in our partnerships, in our relationships, in our abilities to look to each other to help, whether it's emergency response, wildfire, or in the case of our partnership with Monte Serino Law Enforcement Services. The city of Saratoga, and I do want to recognize the mayor of Saratoga who's also in the audience, and the cities of Los Altos Hills and Cupertino are all facing significant increases of cost with their sheriff's contracts. That's expected given what the county is going through. That will have a long-term significant impact on the city of Saratoga. We are a neighboring jurisdiction with Monteserino and we neighbor them both on the north side, north of Monteserino as well as the south side. We share a wildland interface and we share a lot of connections including the school district and other areas that create synergies. The idea of a partnership in law enforcement services is something that we've been having conversations at the staff level. The intent of this conversation is to make it public and transparent and to seek the direction of the council as to whether we should continue in our conversations towards some kind of partnership with Saratoga or take a different direction. And so I'd like to turn it over to the chief to walk through what a partnership like that would look like, and then we can have discussion.

Thank you very much, Town Manager. Jamie Field, Chief for the Police Department. Okay. So thank you for teeing that up. Before you hear this evening is a conversation to look at the conceptual design framework more so on a regional public safety partnership and to seek some direction. So as you can see here, integrated regional municipal policing model in this case would entail not just Los Gatos and our partner currently of Montes Reno, but also perhaps having further conversations with Saratoga as well, a neighboring community. Before you this evening is an action whether to continue in those conversations and then there's also two other lesser degrees of options there. And then of course this evening is not a final agreement. If there was anything of that nature of course we would bring that forth before the council in a public meeting. Next slide please. So why this discussion this evening? We wanted to bring before you again that framework, the philosophy, and just as the town manager has mentioned, the costs related to public safety we see to continuously increase, and that's really focused primarily in three different areas. First, the unfunded mandates, and we see those across all different departments and in municipalities. The unfunded mandates for law enforcement is fairly significant and on the rise. In a two-year period, we see at least 70 hours of required training for each one of our sworn officers. In addition, we have the salary and benefit, and then also we have the complexity surrounding our crimes that we continue to see and the investment of time that needs to go into the investigation. It's a proactive effort to take a look at maintaining our enhanced public safety services across all these partnering jurisdictions. And I think it's an opportunity to look at some fiscal sustainability for Los Gatos, Monterino, and for Saratoga by partnering and potentially reducing the costs of public safety services. Next slide, please. So the history doesn't, the regional public safety model is not new to Los Gatos. We have been partnering already with Montesereno for the last 30 years. We entered into that agreement in 1995 actually. And so we had a 30 year agreement and we negotiated a continuing a partnership with Montessorino, and it's truly a partnership. The model that we provide to Los Gatos is the model that we provide to Montessorino as well. And over the years, I think that we've shown that we are good partners with them, that we work very well with them, and I think that this is potentially an opportunity that we can pursue or at least have conversations about with Saratoga. And looking at Saratoga, Their model or their city over there would, in essence, double our footprint in size. As you see over there under the census reporter, they're just shy of 13 square miles and a little over 30,000 in population. So this would definitely increase our service area. However, I think it would also strengthen us in many ways as well. They have a strong residential community, so primarily residential in nature. They have several schools within that particular area, a downtown village area as well, and then a couple of larger businesses, namely CVS and Safeway.

Next slide, please.

The conceptual framework that we're evaluating here is not a transactional or an hourly model, which may oftentimes be the case. Rather, it's more of that integrated regional service delivery model. And what that means is it includes really one department serving through a collaborative manner three different communities. So it's a shared deployment pattern. similar to what we have now with Monteserino and Los Gatos. And that shared deployment means that our dispatch, which is just maybe 20 yards behind you, they would provide dispatch services to all three communities. Our investigations would provide the same level of investigative services to all three communities, similar to how we currently do with two. Our specialty support would extend beyond. So it would just be extending those, those boundaries for us, but the same level of service would exist for Los Gatos, Montes Reno, and perhaps the third partner of Saratoga. The regional access to public safety, well, we've had many conversations over the localized service and what that means, access to law enforcement, and that personalized approach. We pride ourselves in a high touch service to the communities that we serve. This is not, again, on a fixed hourly model. This is, if the service is needed, that we address those level of services. And the community-oriented policing, well, that is the backbone of the model that we have here at Los Gatos Montes Reno Police Department, and we really pride ourselves in having the community partnerships, the public and private partnerships, that allow us to bridge with our community have further eyes and ears and really be in touch with what the needs and priorities of our community is.

Next slide, please.

So potential partnership, it's really important that it protect the level of services currently within Los Gatos and Montes Reno. This is not to say that that would change at all. Rather, I believe that it would truly enhance our level of service and strengthen that level of service. The regional deployment of shared resources, again going back to that one police department model, the shared resources of dispatch and all the various functions, divisions, and bureaus within the police department. The responsive localized service. For example, maybe two months ago when a gentleman came in and spoke about uh having unfortunately been a victim of burglary within probably 72 hours we had already reached out to that victim followed up with not only his particular case but also the neighbor that he had referenced and offered to them both neighborhood watch services and other technology that we could potentially partner on So that's just a simple example of local service, well that's not to encourage members of the community to bring those concerns to council, but we are absolutely responsive in that manner. The efficient and adaptive public safety model, that's still being evaluated, we contracted for a second time with Malliora Public Safety Consulting. To evaluate the workload, we want to make sure that there is a data-driven approach to this and the potential future beach structure to assure that we have allocated and deployed our resources responsibly to make sure that we are providing those enhanced services throughout. And again, this would not be restricting staffing models to one particular community or another. Next slide, please. So public safety across three communities really presents a number of opportunities to align many of our systems and technologies. So for instance, in this case, if we were to pursue these conversations, it would expand our PSAP center or our dispatch center because currently the community of Saratoga is being serviced by county communications. So it would require us to do some work in that area, but I do see that as an opportunity. This would also involve and engage many other departments within the town of Los Gatos. namely IT would be a big support for us because it would be expanding some of our technologies that we've talked about over the last year or two. PPW due to potential or likely increase in our fleet because we need to be able to make sure to patrol and access and serve community, potentially Saratoga. And then of course HR for recruitment and hiring and the town manager's office as we continue to potentially have these conversations if that is the will of the council. From technology, we would also take a look at managing the ALPR services that Saratoga currently has. and that would meet our standards of transparency and auditing and all of our policy standards as well. We do the same thing for Montessorino currently. This would also additionally expand our other technologies of body-worn cameras, in-car cameras, and the same level of technologies that we currently hold, not adding on necessarily. We would continue to take the transparency and data-driven approach, just like we have assisted Monteserino with their transparency page for their ALPR system, we would do the same. So again, it's just replicating a model that is already currently existing. Saratoga shares with us and some of their concerns surrounding traffic safety. And actually this week we have an officer that will be graduating from motor school, so that will give us a third officer. While we only currently have two motor positions, but that will be an ancillary option should this become an opportunity that we would already have somebody trained and available for us, or if there are other needs for that particular individual. And he's doing quite well. We anticipate him graduating. And then, of course, the schools. So Los Gatos, Saratoga High School, so Saratoga being in that area. And they do have other schools there as well. Providing services to the schools would also be included in this model. Similar to how we provide services to Dave's Avenue School that's in Montessorino. Next slide, please. So additional enhanced services that we within the police department provide is oversight of the volunteer programs. These volunteer programs include the volunteer and policing model that assists us with going out and doing vacation checks, home checks, namely, and also doing the welcome packets. Volunteers in Policing do much more. Our Explorer program would also be offered to this community and DART as well. But we would also have an opportunity to recruit from that population pool for these services which I think makes us so much more robust because we do rely oftentimes on our volunteers. And I think that's something that's unique for our police department of how we mobilize our volunteers whether it be for emergency services or for day-to-day services that our entire communities benefit from. And we do this same for Montessorino. CERT, Saratoga actually already has a active CERT program. So we're not proposing that we would necessarily oversee their CERT program. However, should there be an emergency, Of course, they are in the Wildland Urban Interface area that we could certainly utilize and activate the CERT members should that be needed. And there's also many opportunities for CERTs to work together. And given that they have an active CERT community, of course, our CERT leads are familiar with some of their CERTs over there as well. all train the same, which is wonderful, and they would be overseen by Saratoga's disaster service worker contract, of course. The regional partnerships, that goes without saying, whether it be through task force and other services, that we would continue the regional opportunities there. Saratoga is already engaged with SAVACA, the Animal Control Services, and I know that they also partner with County Fire, and we probably have other overlaps in other areas. The police foundation is already interested in adding somebody from Saratoga to the board. So I always view the police foundation as a community connection for me, almost a chief's advisory council in some ways. where we talk about a lot of ideas and I get a lot of feedback and it's very helpful. So we want to make sure that we would have a voice as well in that case, just as we have done for Montessorino. Other things that come up related to the police foundation are things like the community police academy. So we will be starting our, I believe our fourth community police academy in September of this year. Normally it is in spring. But due to some of the larger events that we have had, we've postponed that. So we will be recruiting here very actively in the upcoming weeks to fill our community police academy again. And we would of course offer that and other services of course to all three communities. So the collaboration and coordination would be very strong across the board. Next slide please. So the transition and implementation, I think that this is a really important piece to take a look at because there's a lot that goes into pursuing a partnership like this. And I think that we need to make sure that we do this in a very measured manner. looking at it taking at least 12 months. And I view this really into three different buckets that are represented in the various tabs up there on the screen. But first and foremost, the administrative and the technology and agreements that would need to be adjusted or expanded. For instance, our CAD, our computer-aided dispatch system and records management system would need to be expanded. Our mapping systems. So many agreements would need to be updated. Perhaps we may need to bring some before council just to get the permission to move forward on that. Technologies and also there's permissions from the federal level to Department of Justice in order to do something like this to take on another jurisdiction and be a true partner in that manner. All very doable, but it's things that take time. Of course there's the staffing piece and that's the more visible aspect to this. So we will hear back from Meliora. We want to make sure that our projections have some level of validation behind them. Certainly have some recommendations to go with that and that's where we would look to HR services to help us with that. The recruitment piece, but as you heard earlier tonight, we are making excellent progress so commend Captain Borromeo and our HR team on Really spearheading that and getting us up to strength or at least on paper until we get some of those folks off of training And then finally, the outreach component of it. Not just outreach to the community of Saratoga and the engagement there, but significant outreach to our own community as well. We want to make sure to listen and respond to questions, concerns of the how and the why and the need and the importance and value surrounding this potential regional partnership opportunity so that our community knows that it won't. entail a change in their public safety services, it's just expanding our service model. Next slide please. The guiding principles that I'm getting at here is to truly protect the services and the level of high service and high touch public safety that we provide currently and just expanding it. Maintaining operational control and deployment decisions within the police department and guidance, of course, from our elected body. And then promoting continuous transparency. I think you all know that I'm a stark proponent of transparency and making sure to share the data, hence our biannual police reports. And we would continue to do that just as we have for Monteserino. That is something we would offer the same for Saratoga as well. And this is really looking at also the added benefit of ensuring fiscal sustainability outlook in forecasting for all three communities. I see a benefit here. Next slide, please. So the timeframe that we are looking at, obviously tonight, you have before you just a decision or an action item of whether to continue this research and conversations. And then early June is when we anticipate getting a report back from the Meliora Public Safety Services on the evaluation of the data before them and within the scope. June 3rd, there will be a conversation with the city of Saratoga's council, which we would go and represent at from the town side. And in the earliest, any conversation surrounding an agreement brought forward to Los Gatos Town Council could be June 16th. So that would be the earliest state. That's not a recommendation. It's just more of a projection of those options. As you see, the goal at the bottom is truly to determine whether a sustainable and mutually beneficial regional partnership exists and mutually beneficial across all three communities. Next slide, please. So I really see this as communities connected through service and namely public safety service and a public safety service model that only strengthens, doesn't change in the how we do things at all. This is our community policing model is what we would look to offer to another neighboring jurisdiction, not an hourly model. Hourly models, I believe, are more transactional in nature. And we're looking at more of a relational model. We see the bridge and the opportunities that come with that. Los Gatos, Monteserino, and Saratoga, I think where there are some similarities and alignments is in their values of public safety, of embracing law enforcement appreciation and recognition for law enforcement. And that it is about education, prevention, and enforcement whenever necessary. That the expectations are very similar in the responsiveness and visibility engagement. The priorities as I had already mentioned about traffic enforcement and maintaining the expectations. The philosophy surrounding community centered policing is that we are out there, we are visible, we're accessible. And then, of course, the collaboration through many of the areas that we already talked about, CERT, Savaca, County Fire, and other opportunities on the horizon. So with that, I conclude my presentation, and I'm available if there's any questions.

Mr. Mayor, if I may. Yeah, I think we need a motion to keep the meeting going. Would someone like to make one?

Yes, Councilmember Hudus. Move to continue the meeting through 1230.

Great.

Second.

Excellent. All those in favor? Aye. OK. Questions for the chief?

Yes.

As usual, the chief's presentation is comprehensive and doesn't leave room for many questions. But the couple of things I've been thinking about with this is how this would improve public safety in Los Gatos. And so I wanted to put a couple of ideas out there you probably touched on them a bit but um in your assessment about two areas one is our ability to respond during a natural emergency such as a wildfire or disaster it seems as though a wildfire that even earthquake but mostly a wildfire is not only possible to involve Los Gatos and Saratoga, but maybe even likely something that starts on the hillsides. Do you see that through police response, CERT, coordination with our emergency coordinator as a way that might improve public safety in Los Gatos if we were to collaborate?

I think a regional model offers a more cohesive service. So we wouldn't have as many entities involved. And then obviously, instead of just having three fire departments, that would also include the Quito and the Saratoga Fire Department. So you're looking at five fire departments that we would be establishing a unified command with and really looking to county fire to provide us direction on evacuations and next steps. What I will also offer is our drone is not just for law enforcement services. When the drone is up, we can take a look at and with some of our real time information center capabilities, we can look at traffic congestion and of course get to areas to mitigate where there might be choke points for evacuation services. So we can assist with that in Saratoga, Montes Reno, and Los Gatos across the board.

Yeah, and I would just comment on that, that I think the collaboration between CERT and the PD and the emergency coordinator is superb. I mean, I've been involved in CERT programs in some other cities around here. Sometimes they tolerate each other, sometimes they just operate alongside each other, but there's true collaboration, everything from budgeting to exercises, all the things that we need to have. And so when I think about a wildfire or something like that, I think about us potentially being safer with a collaboration with Saratoga. I'm gonna bring up one you may not want to comment on, but it's in my mind, and that is the root cause of the financial issues that's causing the financial strain on Saratoga and Cupertino and some other communities coming from the county. And my observation is that this isn't just in reaction to federal government, it's in reaction to a structural issue that the county has with regard to the acquisition of the hospitals and that consuming such a large portion. And so again, my question would be, are we safer here in Los Gatos if Saratoga is safer from a public safety issue? And you may not wanna answer, but I have real concerns about the county and wanted to ask that question.

Thank you for the question. I think that's probably a little bit outside the scope of my abilities to answer and also to be able to gauge if they would be safer or not. That's a very difficult assessment to be able to provide. I feel that we provide excellent service and take great pride in it. And so I can just answer from our current design, I guess.

Thank you. Great. Well, we do have one public comment. So I will open up the public comment portion, and I will call on Mr. Chuck Page.

Thank you, Mary more vice mayor and council members. I'm Chuck page, the mayor of Saratoga. 1st of all, I want to thank your town manager and she field for putting together the work that they've done. I know that other staff has probably been involved in that too. And I want to thank you all for allowing that to happen. Yes, this is a result of a structural deficit at the county probably caused by exactly what council member who just talked about. We were informed a couple of years ago that they were going to a cost recovery model, and we should anticipate about a 20% increase in our law enforcement costs. That turned into 34% or something like that. So it's quite dramatic. Unlike low status, Saratoga doesn't have a lot of opportunities for additional revenue. We have property taxes of which we get about. Well, between 6 and 6 and a half percent, and we have about a 1M dollars of sales tax revenue. Then, of course, there's a little bit of that could go away at any time and some road funding gas tax money. so we are looking at this very seriously we think that we also feel that a regional model is a really good one in fact when i was on the council before in the period of 2006 to 2014 we had also looked at possibly engaging with los gatos montserino police department to provide our law enforcement services we weren't unhappy with what we were getting from the county I just always feel that as a council member, it's my job to look at all the alternatives and since law enforcement is 1 of our largest expenditures. I knew that was something we needed to do. We didn't have the opportunity to go forward at that time, but I would encourage you to allow this process to continue. We were given our numbers on December 31st. That's when they told us we're going from 9Million bucks a year to 12 or round about numbers. It's six months is really hard to get it. We have gone back to them several times. We've had a counter proposal at least twice. We've asked him for more detail. That all hasn't been that forthcoming. I got to tell you that in our interactions with with low status so far, we have gotten responses to some of those questions. So we're very thankful for that. And if you've got any questions, I'm happy to ask it. I don't want to. Well, good morning to you all. So, but if you got any questions, I'm happy to answer.

Thank you, Mayor. Any questions of Chuck? Seeing none. Thank you very much. Thank you for sitting through our long meeting. Do we have any other comments? I don't see any hands raised on Zoom.

There are no hands raised.

Great. Then I will close public comment and turn back to the Council.

Council Member Rennie. So, no questions. As you said, Council Member Hughes said, very comprehensive report. I'm confident you've mentioned many of the things you still need to think about. I realize we wanna provide Saratoga with a good competitive fair number, but we wanna protect ourselves in the future, because we don't know where cost escalations are gonna go. So I think that's some of the planning you're still gonna do. And so I feel confident that you've got all the right things in mind with that. I can't thank staff enough for doing the work on this. I'll tell you, the idea, at least for me, first came about three years ago when I was talking to Planning Commission. I was talking to Linda Reiners about, you know, what's our biggest cost in Los Gatos and how do we deal with the rising costs? And, you know, her comment being from the business world is, well, if you have rising costs, you need to build your revenues. So, shortly after that, I thought, well, Saratoga, we could probably provide services to Saratoga and that would be Increase the revenue side of it, hopefully not increasing the costs more than we could increase the revenue. So I did start talking to a couple start to council members at the time socializing the idea. and you know is this a win-win we collaborate with saratoga on so many other things with the five west valley cities we work with the mayors get together every month and work together we are on several jpas together with them we exchange ideas all the time so collaborating with saratoga is just natural for us my almost 12 years now on council i've always had good relations with the Saratoga Council members and good collaboration. So I really feel like, and I thought it three years ago, that that could be a good place to increase our collaborations. And when I started talking to them, it turns out they were already in the process of renewing their, for two more years, their contract with the county. So there wasn't enough time to really do anything. And I, so again, I socialized the idea with our staff, with previous town manager, and then again with our new town manager. And so I really appreciate that at the time I felt like, yeah, okay, sure, Rob, great idea. And they were, I was being ignored, but then I started seeing some traction on this idea. So again, I really appreciate staff running with this idea because at the time, and I still do think this is a great opportunity to create a win-win where we can get some of our fixed costs covered, find some more operational efficiencies so it can help our police budget while it's clearly gonna help Saratoga with what we're proposing for a cheaper than where their THE NEW NUMBER THAT THEY ARE BEING PROPOSED FOR THE CONTRACT. I THINK WE CAN SAVE THEM MONEY AND I BELIEVE WE CAN PROVIDE BETTER SERVICE. THAT WAS AT THE TIME WHEN I FIRST TALKED TO THE COUNCILMEMBERS, I THOUGHT, WELL, PROBABLY CAN'T DO IT ANY CHEAPER BUT I BET WE COULD DO BETTER SERVICE. well thank you county because you've made the case even better for us so i i'm very excited to move forward with this um and again i want to thank linda reiners for giving me the idea and staff for for following up for the last couple years i guess it was maybe good that they did a two-year renewal because it gave us enough time to think this through very thoroughly and it really looks like it's very thorough. So to speed it up, I'll go ahead and put a motion on the table to continue the conversations with Saratoga.

Great, yes, Council Member Hudeis. I'll enthusiastically second that for all the reasons that you articulated. Yes, Vice Mayor Risto.

Um, I think everything's been said, but I just want to extend my, um. Gratitude for I'm sure what was. Countless hours of work that went into this and the consideration, and I think a couple of years ago, when I thought about if Los Gatos could provide. You know, regional service, you know, some talk had been around that and I thought Saratoga could benefit from this. But maybe. It wasn't the right time or whatever the way I look at this. I think we are taking a big risk. We are taking a risk. We are going to have to hire up. We're going to have to increase. Our overhead a little bit, but this can really benefit Saratoga in the region, make us stronger, make us safer and will be better for our police department where we can. Allocate some of our overhead for the service that we're extending and yet give Saratoga an incredibly fair price and have consistent policing across the region So, you know understanding that it's not a done deal and that there's a lot more work to do But so much work has gone in I fully support this motion. I

If I could just respond. Thank you very much for the recognition of the work. It's been work that we've actually appreciated the opportunity to do. Over 30 years ago, Chief Todd came before both Montessorino Council at that time and Saratoga to do exactly what we're doing here. And obviously the partnership then developed. with Montessorino which actually ended up working out I believe excellent in the long run because it was a smaller opportunity to see how that partnership would unfold and now 30 years later look at where we're at and it's just two different communities same level of service and the only thing that's different is the road signs have a quail. So this has been an excellent opportunity to just kind of show the proof of the partnership through the concept. Yes, two years ago, or a little over two years ago, you know, I started paying some pretty close attention to this, and I do believe that there is an excellent win-win opportunity here potentially on the horizon.

Great. Council Member Dahme, did you have a comment?

Yes, I'll chime in. So I agree with the win win and action very excited at the proposal, not just for us, but for Saratoga and also for Monte Serino. I mean, when you really think about it, we're really better together in strengthening relationships. So I'll be supporting the motion.

Yes, and I'll just quadruple down or whatever the fifth thing is. I think there's a real opportunity here. I think this is an excellent idea. And the other thing that I'll just add is I think this is only possible because the team we have. So I just want to give a huge amount of kudos to the chief, the town manager, everyone at PD who has been working very hard on this. I think with another team, this wouldn't be possible. And so I think we have leaders who are smart in all the right ways and capable of taking this on. In government, I think sometimes we have folks that, if we're pointing at the county a little bit, who've maybe grown a little long in the tooth and aren't ambitious and don't want to grow. And I think it says a lot about our collective communities that we're all wanting to get better together. And so just huge kudos to staff for this.

Thank you. I also have to give significant appreciation to my entire team because this would not be possible if there were not the buy-in internally. I've met with all of our patrol teams, dispatch records to make sure to get a temperature check and engage with them as well. And it's because of all of their hard work and commitment and pride in the organization that this would be made possible.

Thank you very much. The town manager. So the chief mentioned the Saratoga City Council is going to hear this item on June 3rd and will be there to answer questions. The approach we're taking in this partnership is putting ourselves in their shoes and what we would expect if the roles were reversed. And I think that's very important given who we are here in the West Valley. We're going to expect a physical presence in Saratoga and making sure that this is not what the traditional contract type approach is, that truly it doesn't make sense for us to do it unless it's done in an integrated fashion, like we're one in the same. And I will say by way of example to the question about safety, during the Paradise Fire, we had no arrangement in the city of Chico with the town of Paradise. And so Paradise came down to operate out of our EOC in Chico. The county who's primarily responsible for the fire and the emergency response had been spread across a large scope of the area because of the physical geography they're responsible for. And they were doing an incredible job trying to deal with something so massive in California. However, it was Chico and Paradise working together, two communities that have a synergy with each other that allowed them to operate their EOC, to allow us to find locations for their middle school and other locations that were burned. And so I think in the West Valley, we're going to be increasing the local police force that is available in a smaller geographic area. I don't know that I don't believe the county is reducing their force. So in terms of the number of deputies are going to have, they will still have the same number, albeit deployed separately. We have a great relationship with the Sheriff's Department and other county departments. And in the case of mutual aid and any disaster that may strike, we're all going to be there for each other. But I think overall, there will be more resources for Los Gatos, Montestorino, and Saratoga as part of this. And that's the approach we're taking walking in.

Great. Thank you very much. So with a motion and a second, I will call the question. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Passes unanimously. Thank you very much, Chief. Thank you. Okay. So now we will breeze through council matters, and I will start with Council Member Redding.

I have nothing to report.

That more than fast enough, thank you. Yes, Vice Mayor Hudas.

Council Member. I'm sorry. I attended and participated in a group of the West Valley cities on wildfire advisory, looking at potential collaborations across, and that was on the 8th, I participated in the finance commission meeting on the 11th and I met with a council member from Saratoga to discuss the WVMA as well as the police services and that's it.

Thank you. Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. On the 11th, I also was part of the Finance Commission meeting, our third meeting about the budget before it came here. On the 12th, I met with a member of the public about the public restroom. On the 13th, Council Member Badami and I were at CDAC and heard a presentation or concept for a 100-unit, 100% affordable housing Potential projects on Lark Avenue, exciting. That could be 100%. We'll see what happens on the later that night. I attended the rink and out of water treatment plant public meeting. Valley water or sorry. Yeah. Valley water is holding every 6 month community meetings that I've been attending for the nearby neighbors and the communication is excellent. And the neighbors are very happy with the progress. and this was on phases three through six on this rehabilitation project. On the 14th, I chaired the VTA PAC meeting. We selected a new vice chair, which is John McAllister from Mountain View. Excited to have him by my side. And we had two items for discussion. One is SB 63, the citizen-led Ballot initiative that might be on the ballot and fall of 26, this would be a 5 county region, half cent sales tax for 14 years. And the Santa Clara county share is expected to be around 264Million dollars that would go to. And unlike the other. The other transit agencies, VTA is not in financial dire straits. The others are looking at this to keep them afloat. So what VTA would be looking at, we discussed scope of projects where it would be restricted to either paving roads or improving infrastructure for transit and expanding the transit that we have. So there could be some real opportunities for us to get better transit with this sales tax. We also had a very long discussion about the Silicon Valley Express Lane Strategic Plan. And this is a plan that's looking at putting in additional carpool and toll lanes on highways and freeways, including potentially two toll lanes on 85, which created a lot of heated discussion. So right now it's just There'll be a lot of public outreach. There'll be some scoping. Um, the approval for that was just to move forward with the overall study, not to approve that plan. On the 15th, I, um. Attended the special board of directors, Silicon Valley, clean energy meeting. Um, as alternate for council member, and I'll give the really brief snapshot. We strengthened two existing power purchase agreements, received an update on Silicon Valley Clean Energy's customer education efforts, adopted final rates for two innovative rate pilot programs, and made some key board committee assignments. We had some vacancies on a variety of our committees and we filled those up. On the 16th, I attended the Lee high school longhorn stampede 5 K, because the mayor couldn't make it. So. Council member Pam fully did the opening remarks at the starting line. When I completed the race at the end, I gave closing remarks and was able to hand out. with two other people there, the awards to the different age group winners, including there were winners in the age group of 80 to 99 for the men, and 80 to 99 for the women. And they completed those, the man was 87 years old, and they completed the 5K in well under an hour, so it was pretty impressive. And then, last night I was here with the mayor for eight hours? long time from four to eight. Now that was four hours of interviewing the youth commissioners and it was it's always inspiring that our young people are incredible. What was really hard about this is we had 38 applicants and we can only make 19 assignments. So anyway, congratulations to all of them.

Please.

Thank you. On May 7th, I attended the Kiwanis Turnaround Scholarship Awards Luncheon. Later that afternoon, I participated in a board meeting of the West Valley Clean Water Authority. And then after that meeting, I participated in a board meeting of the West Valley Stormwater Authority. On May 11th, I attended a meeting at the Finance Commission. On the 13th, as the Vice Mayor noted, I participated in a meeting of the Conceptual Advisory Committee. And on the 14th, I attended a benefit for KCAT as a kickoff fundraiser for the Oktoberfest event. That's all I have.

Great, thank you. And I attended the Hillbrook Impact Challenge where two groups of Hillbrook students presented their ideas for how to better educate the community about e-bike safety. And they put together some really, really well-done graphics that I think the town could look at sharing. So I think that's great. I spoke to the Terraces Men's Club, which is a group of, probably 50 people that super engaged, really enjoyed it, had a great time there. They were great hosts. I enjoyed attending the quarterly all staff meeting where, you know, hearing about all the good work that's happening in the town of Los Gatos, so I enjoyed that. I CHAIRED MY FIRST MEETING AS THE CHAIR OF THE CITIES ASSOCIATION LEGISLATIVE ACTION COMMITTEE. I BROUGHT SEVEN BILLS FORWARD AND WE SUPPORTED ALL OF THEM, WHICH WAS SORT OF MIRACULOUS. WE USUALLY DON'T. AND THEN I ATTENDED THE GIRLS ON THE RUN 5K TO PROVIDE OPENING REMARKS AND THEN done in my personal capacity, but very much relevant to my work. I put on at West Valley College a youth town hall over the weekend where we had about 200 high school, mostly high school students who attended a half day event really trying to create opportunities for young people to get involved in the community. We had a variety of high-profile speakers, and the students got to engage with a bunch of different mentors about topics like finance, tech, government. And they were all just super engaged, amazing young people, impressed the heck out of me. And yeah, so really enjoyed doing that. And that's all I've got. I'll turn it over to the town manager and then town attorney.

due to the hour, no report from the town manager.

And no closed session report. Thank you.

Excellent. Then with 11 minutes to spare, this meeting is adjourned.