City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Let's call to order the special council meeting closed session of June 23rd, 2026 at 6 p.m. The city council does not tolerate disruptive behaviors in our meetings. The council meeting is considered a limited public forum. which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda being considered by the council. If a speaker's comments are not related to an agenda item, the presiding officer will rule the speaker out of order. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of disagreement with the content of their speech. Location and online meeting details are available on the council agenda. Use the show captions button to view captions on Zoom. Following the closed session, the regular council meeting will begin at 7 p.m. Mr. City Clerk, may we have the roll call, please?

Mayor Klein.

Present.

Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Present.

Council Member Cisneros.

Present.

Council Member Srinivasan.

Present.

Council Member Sell.

Present.

Council Member Chang.

Present.

Council Member Lay. Six present with Council Member Lay absent.

Thank you. Members of the public will now have an opportunity to address counsel on the closed session item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on a telephone to indicate you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have one speaker card for Ashley Ortiz.

Do I get a full three minutes today? I only wrote a one minute thing. I have too much time now. Okay. Well, I'll just go ahead and keep it to my one minute thing. So keep it simple. So good evening, Mayor Klein, Vice Mayor Mellinger and council members. So excited to be here and Happy to see y'all faces again in hopefully a more positive aspect. So as you will probably know, my name is Ashley Ortiz. I am a Sunnyvale resident, a parent, and a member of Tessa Takedown Sunnyvale and the Wolves. I have also ran the No Kings protests that some of y'all have attended. I urge you all to take immediate action to protect our community by joining the amicus brief supporting the lawsuit filed by Santa Clara County and the California Attorney General to stop the proposed ICE detention facility near Gilroy. Several local cities and counties have already signed on, including San Jose, Palo Alto, Alameda, Monterey County, Santa Cruz County, and San Mateo County. Sunnyvale should stand with them. This issue is very personal to me. Members of my immediate family are applying for citizenship or are DACA recipients. They work hard, contribute to our community, and live with through enough uncertainty already, daily. Just going to the store, we are scared. A new ICE facility would bring even more fear to immigrant families, not even just my own, across our region. And in Sunnyvale, we know that there are many, and they all are amazing, contribute, and I'm very proud that we have such a diverse community here. Beyond the human cost, mass deportation policies threaten our local economy and workforce. Sunnyvale has been built and strengthened by our immigrant communities, and I respectfully ask you to join the amicus brief and stand up for the safety, dignity, and well-being of our residents. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Mr. City Clerk, are there any other speakers in the room wishing to speak on this item?

No, Vice Mayor.

Are there any online speakers wishing to speak on this item?

Yes, Vice Mayor. First up is Akemi. Akemi, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the City Council.

Thank you so much, Mayor and City Council. I just want to join the previous speaker and urge you to have the City of Sunnyvale sign on and join the amicus brief. You are among three City Councils that are this evening deliberating on this issue, so while the official list may look like less than 10. I know from working closely with the PRP, the organization that is working with the County of Monterey on this local government amicus brief, that there are many more that are in process. And so I hope that you will join them Having you, the City of Sunnyvale, and many other cities and counties throughout the region will really strengthen the lawsuit and is a really important part of all of us working together across the region because the impact, if the facility does open, will be significant across the region. Have no doubt that while Gilroy may seem like it's far away, the impact of a scaled up immigration enforcement will be felt severely on businesses, community members, et cetera. So I thank you very much for your leadership in the past and hope that we can count on it tonight. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. City Clerk. Are there any other members of the public wishing to speak on this item?

Yes, Vice Mayor. Next up is Perel.

Before we get to them, let the record show that Council Member Lay arrived at 6.05 p.m.

Proceed. Perel, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the city council.

Fuck. I know, Shane.

That's enough.

Remote speakers are warned to limit their comments to the agenda item being considered. Speakers who are ruled out of order will not be given another chance to speak on this item. The agenda item is A and involves the following topic. Item A, conference with legal counsel, initiation of litigation. Initiation of litigation pursuant to paragraph four of subdivision D of government code section 54956.9. Mr. City Clerk, do we need to re-enable the previous speaker?

Vice Mayor, I recommend giving them an opportunity to listen to your admonition and address the topic.

Speaker has warned that further disruptive behavior will not be tolerated. Proceed.

Perel, you have been unmuted again.

Thank you. Fuck!

That's enough.

Okay, Vice Mayor, there are no other individuals remote indicating a desire to speak on this agenda item.

I will now close public comment. Thank you. Council will now adjourn to close session. See you back here at 7 p.m.

Hey, David, checking in to make sure you can hear me.

Hello, Connie. Yes, we're able to hear you. Thanks for checking in.

Perfect. Thanks, David.

Good evening.

Sorry. Good evening. Let's call the door to the council meeting of June 23rd, 2026 at 7 p.m. The city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. Sunnyvale prides itself on the rich diversity of our residents. We are committed to creating a culture of belonging where our members of our diverse community feel included, safe, and respected. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item being considered by council for public hearing items. Speaker comments during oral communications must be limited to matters within council's authority generally referred to as council subject matter jurisdiction. If a speaker's comments are not related to an agenda item, the presiding officer will rule that speaker out of order. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech. Location and online meeting details are available on the council agenda. Scan the QR code on the screen or click the language access and translation link on the council agenda to read and listen along in more than 60 different languages. Use the show captions button to view captions on Zoom. Comments of matters not on the agenda must be submitted prior to the time I call the item for oral communications. Comments on agenda items must be submitted prior to the time I close a public hearing on that agenda item. Speakers are requested to keep their comments to the time period set for that specific item and time limits will be strictly enforced. Guidelines are posted on the city website and on the council meeting agenda. Please stand if you are able and join me in a salute to the flag. 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. Next up is roll call. City Clerk, may we please have roll call?

Mayor Klein.

Present.

Vice Mayor Mellinger. Present. Council Member Cisneros.

Present.

Council Member Srinivasan.

Present.

Council Member Sell.

Present.

Council Member Chang.

Present.

Council Member Lay.

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor, may we please have the closed session report. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. City Council met in closed session pursuant to government code section 54956.94D. The council voted to join an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs in the Action County of Santa Clara and the State of California versus U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement et al. Case number 5-26-CV-05604. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The case challenges the proposed development and operation of an immigration and customs enforcement facility near the city of Gilroy. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next up is oral communications. This is now the public's opportunity to address council on topics not listed on tonight's agenda. This section is limited to 15 minutes and may be extended or continued after our general business. Individuals may only speak once during oral communications. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments during oral communications must be limited to matters within counsel's authority, generally referred to as counsel's subject matter jurisdiction. If a speaker's comments are outside of counsel's subject matter jurisdiction, the presiding officer will rule that speaker out of order. This allows counsel to conduct its business in a reasonably efficient manner and protects the rights of other speakers. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk, raise your digital hand now, or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. Before I get to the public, Council Member Srinivasan has several announcements.

Thank you, Mayor. I have three announcements. Fourth of July Festival, America's 250th anniversary. You are invited to join Sunnyvale in celebrating America's 250th anniversary on Saturday, July 4th. Come down to downtown Sunnyvale and historic Murphy Avenue to enjoy our festival. The event will run 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and feature amusement rides, including 72-foot Ferris wheel and carnival games and a 100-feet slide, family-friend entertainment, a bike parade, and a free bike valet for stress-free bike cycle parking. The event is just a short walk from a local restaurant, so you can savor delicious food while enjoying all the festivals. Admission is free. For more information, please email recreation at sunnyvale.ca.gov or visit sunnyvale.ca.gov and search special events. Bring your whole family and celebrate with us. We hope to see you there. Next announcement. Fireworks are illegal in Sunnyvale. As we head into the 4th of July, July 4th holiday, help keep our community safe. Fireworks of any kind are prohibited in Sunnyvale, including those fireworks classified as safe and sane by California State Fire Marshal. Fireworks cause more than 19,000 fires and send over 9,000 people to emergency room in the US each year. Aside from possibly landing you in the hospital, setting fireworks in Sunnyvale could get you a hefty fine, is a nuisance to your neighbors, terrifies pets, and can spark fires. Non-emergency calls about fireworks also tie up the 911 system. To report fireworks-related fires and injury, call 911. To report a specific location where fireworks are being set off, call 408-730-7180, non-emergency public safety number. Next announcement is My Sunnyvale. My Sunnyvale replaces Access Sunnyvale. My Sunnyvale is our new customer service platform that makes it easier to report issues, request services, and share feedback with the city. The system replaces Access Sunnyvale on the city's website and is available through both the web portal and mobile app, both iOS and Android. My Sunnyvale went live yesterday, Monday, June 22nd. The important things to know about this transition, we transferred all open tickets to the new system. If you have an Access Sunnyvale bookmark, you need to update that with the new link. We will be updating affected web pages and links over the next few weeks. You might experience broken link during that time. When the mobile apps are available, we will post the link to download them on the city's website. To use the system, visit sunnyvale.ca.gov and select My Sunnyvale from the top right corner. For questions and more information, call the office of the city manager at 408-730-7480. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. I'll read off two names. First name, please come to the lectern. And the next person, please be in the wings. First up is Russ M., followed by Angie H.,

Right. So good evening, Mayor and Council. Russ Melton here, CEO of the Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. And on the heels of our very successful Art and Wine Festival on June 6th and 7th, I want to express on behalf of the Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce our immense gratitude to the City of Sunnyvale for the tremendous partnership in bringing the event to fruition. And I want to apologize, my photos and the slide deck here got a little bit jumbled up, so let's see how this goes. It really takes a village to pull off something as immense as the Art and Wine Festival. I want to commend our partners at Megalith, LLC, and Pacific Fine Arts, as well as our incredible volunteers, and especially CBRE CityLine for letting us use parking lot 6, as well as a number of their roadways. This is parking lot six, which was repurposed into the Sunshine Yard for the Art and Wine Festival. But getting back to the city of Sunnyvale, the motto around this place is, we build community trust by delivering exceptional services, and I wanna let you know, council members, that's the real deal. I want to call out specifically, the organizations within the city that the chamber had the pleasure of working with. First up is LRS, Library and Recreation Services, who quarterback the entire thing here within the city of Sunnyvale. We worked with ESD for trash management, and water quality analysis. We worked with public safety for safety, security, and fire permits. We worked with CDD for traffic, noise, and construction permit issues. We worked with human resources for risk management and insurance. We worked with the office of the city manager who helped us with an application to another governmental agency. We worked with Public Works who implemented the roadblocks and no left turn signs and all of the roadway necessities on the day. And then finally, I wanted to say thank you to Sunnyvale City Council because you guys approved two meetings ago on your consent agenda unanimously the in-kind contribution from Public Works to do the road closures for us. So on behalf of the Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, thank you very much. And since I have a few seconds left, I'm here to announce our upcoming golf tournament, the Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce inaugural golf tournament. This is going to be another fantastic collaboration with the city of Sunnyvale because we're holding it on that date in August that's on your screen at Sunken Gardens. Sign up if you will. We'd love to see you there and sponsorship opportunities are available. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you. Next up is Angie H followed by Tiffany A.

Good evening, Mayor Klein, Sunnyvale City Council members, City Manager Tim Kirby. Thank you for having me here tonight. I'm Angie Hinson. I'm with Las Palmas Green and Serene. And you've heard me on different nights talking about different things related to Las Palmas. Tonight, I just want to tell you all thank you. I know that you've all taken time out of your busy schedules to meet with us, to listen to us, to hear us. And I want you to know that we appreciate it. We truly do. Sometimes it may not seem like it, but Las Palmas, as you know, has such a special place in our heart. And we are so happy that we've been able to share our park with all of you. So tonight I'm here to say thank you. And also thank you to your city staff who has met with us a few times. And I realize that when they meet with us, it puts them 45 minutes behind on something else that they're working on. So again, it's thank you to them. And I know together we can collaborate and make Las Palmas an even more amazing park than it is now and continue to be sure that it's welcoming and inclusive for all. So thank you.

Thank you. Tiffany A followed by Zachary K. Thank you, Mayor Klein and the City Council.

I'm here on behalf of the Sunnyvale Heritage Museum and wanted to share with you something that we're so excited about. This is our 2025 impact report that we've put together for folks who are interested in knowing the value of the Sunnyvale Heritage Museum. Inside, it has different things that happened in 2005, and you have a packet of other interesting items that are going on at the Sunnyvale Heritage Museum. I also wanted to introduce you to our vice president, who's just sitting in the audience. His name is Spencer Studley, and he's helping us to achieve the closure of a tech wall that's been in the make for the last maybe 20 years. So I just wanted to say thank you very much. Again, I'm Tiffany Anderson, president of the Sunnyvale Heritage Museum. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Zachary K followed by Emmanuel E or G, sorry.

I'll provide references at the end via QR codes for anybody that finds them interesting. If you ever wondered what happened after the 2019 Civil Grand Jury Report entitled, quote, inquiry into the governance of the Valley Transportation Authority, close quote, came out, there's a sentencing mercury news piece newly released. Within it, we have, quote, VTA not following the recommendation of a 2019 Civil Grand Jury Report to reform its governance structure, close quote. Three noteworthy quotes that drive headlines from the piece. The current grand jury said that during its investigation, quote, sources repeatedly raised concerns about the level of knowledge and decision-making ability of the full VTA board. In 2014, the project, Bart to Silicon Valley, was expected to cost 4.7 billion and open in 2026. But the latest estimate now pegged the price tag at 12.75 billion with a 2037 opening. Well, the grand jury said there is, quote, no realistic plan to deal with foreseeable financial risk, let's quote. They may not be getting federal funding. This report deals with the government structure, but also dives into light rail. You remember the VTA representative here that wanted, Yeah, I'm sorry. This report deals with governance structure, but also dives into light rail. You remember the VTA representative here that wanted to buy new light, representatives here that wanted to buy new light rail trains with batteries on board so San Jose could remove some of the light rail power lines downtown? Here's the brand new grand jury report released on June 17th. It just so happened to trigger a Mercury News story on June 17th. Lastly, the Merck story.

Thank you. And my last speaker card in the room is Emmanuel G. Good evening, Mayor Klein, City Council.

Thank you for allowing me the time to speak. I'm speaking on behalf of Las Palmas, Green and Serene. Part of the reason why we are still here is because we have an issue with the needs assessment that was performed back in 2024. The survey was flawed and even city council had questions about the results of the survey. the council actually asked, to what extent could the survey be hackable and artificially inflate numbers? And the response was the survey was created on open.gov and there was not a limit to the number of responses per user. So not only were residents skeptical, but even yourselves were skeptical of these results. And so how can we use the needs assessment as a guide to determine how to spend money for parks, especially when we have at least 8 million pegged just for Las Palmas? So this is not just a Las Palmas problem. This needs assessment is going to affect all the parks that are going to need renovation. How can we truly believe that these results were real? How can we be responsible in spending that amount of money by using data that could possibly be flawed? There were roughly, I believe, 400 people who replied that said that they wanted certain things at Las Palmas that we obviously don't agree with. And I just wanted to point out that since our group has been active, I really haven't seen any other people that are proposing or that are proponents of other things that we don't want at our park here at city council. Where are these people who replied to this survey, the 400 plus people? Are they real? Do they even exist? That's all I have to say.

Thank you.

That was my last speaker card in the room. City Clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak under oral communications?

No, Mayor.

Okay, I'll go ahead and close oral communications. With that, we will move on to our general business. Our first item is item 26-0622, continued from June 16th, 2026. Adoption of three resolutions calling for general municipal election to be held in the city of Sunnyvale on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026, for the purpose of submitting to the city voters three amendments to the city charter. Is there a staff report?

There is. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Connie Vercelis, Assistant City Manager. Next slide, please. The purpose of tonight's item or meeting is to complete a process That began in 2023 with a council colleagues memo. In 2024, the city council established a charter review commission with members that were sworn in in December of 2024. Since then, you know, there's been a lot of public outreach, community input, a professional pool, and we've done a lot of check-ins with city council and had updates at city council meetings. And also in May of this year, council directed staff to return with the three potential ballot measures for placement in the November 26 ballot. So tonight, you know, we're sort of putting everything together and it's the culmination of a really a multi-year effort that will allow council to consider whether to place the three measures before Sunnyvale voters this November. Next slide. So the three measures that council asked staff to come back with language is the first one is addressing council vacancies. And that's section 606 of the charter. The current language states that appointed council members have to serve until the earliest statewide election. And this could mean that it could be a primary election or a special election. And in some cases, this could result in two council elections in the same year. And it also may require a separate special election, which from experience could be pretty costly to fill that. fill that seat. The proposed language that you'll see in the next slide is that appointed council members serve until the next November general municipal election, which is an even numbered years. And the reason that the Charter Review Committee recommended this as well as City Council is that this could avoid duplicate elections in the same calendar year and or eliminate the cost of a standalone special election. The second charter amendment that council is considering placing on the ballot addresses section 1309 of the charter, which currently locks the city into a design-bid-build type of process for public works projects. And by Amending this amendment, this gives council the flexibility to authorize state-approved delivery methods via an ordinance while maintaining competitive bidding requirements in place. It just gives council the opportunity to adopt an ordinance and give staff additional flexibility when building public works projects. And then the third amendment that council is considering addresses section 1314 of the charter, which currently sets the city manager settlement authority to settle cases against the city at $50,000. And this is set by state law and it has not changed since 1989. The proposed amendment in the language that council asked staff to come back would, it doesn't necessarily set a new limit in the charter, but it will allow the city council to have the flexibility to set that amount by ordinance. And council, or staff, I'm sorry, will return back to council in July with the draft ordinance to recommend that council adopt an ordinance and only if this measure passes in November. Next slide. So this is the proposed language and it's on the screen so I won't read it verbatim. But just as a reminder, I'll show you three slides with the proposed language for the proposed charter amendments. And as a reminder for council, these questions must be neutral, they have to stay under 75 words and it needs to be a very neutral language that does not sway voters one way or the other. So this is the language that is being proposed by staff for council consideration. The first one is for the section 606 of the charter and it deals with vacancies. Next slide. This is the slide for Section 1309, and this is to allow the city council to adopt an ordinance to give the city staff more options for delivering public works construction projects. And again, the language is on your screen, so I won't bore you by reading it. And then the third one, next slide. And the third one deals with section 1304 of the charter to authorize the city council to adopt an ordinance, setting the city manager settlement authority via an ordinance to potentially increase it from the $50,000 current limit. Next slide. And in order for council to make the direction, council needs to do a few things. In order for each measure, council has to choose one option, either option A or option B. For each measure, an option A allows the full council to submit an argument as a body to submit an argument in favor of the measure, or option B, which you either designate one member or a certain amount of members together. to submit and sign the arguments in favor of the measures. Or council could also actually take no action, and then the city clerk would follow the election codes and priorities to select which argument is printed on the sample ballot. And the key on this is that we have to, there's deadlines by the county. We have to submit the arguments for or against by August 11th of this year by 5 p.m. And then also rebuttal arguments are due to the county by August 18th at 5 p.m. And then again, this would be council. We'd have to go through and council get direction on which option they wanted, council prefers for each measure. Next slide so based on this staff recommends alternatives 1 to 3 for council to adopt all 3 resolutions and to place all the to place the 3 measures on the ballot for November of this year. And also, and staff does not make a recommendation in regards to. council's positions on the ballot argument decision. That's really up for council to decide. And then again, as a reminder, the follow-up ordinance regarding the City Manager Settlement Authority would come back to council in July of this year. This completes staff's report. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Does council have any questions of staff? First up is Council Member Sreenivasan.

Thank you, Mayor. For measure E and F, which were on the ballot 2024, I think we had option B, right? We had some select council members write the FAR arguments. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Thank you, Senator Park. I know. I checked the ballot statement also, but I wanted to clarify. That's my question. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Next up is Council Member Sell.

Hi. Thank you for the report. So for the Public Works Contracting It says authorize alternative project delivery methods. So it was like more general. But what was discussed before, I think, was that the same firm could bid for both the design and the implementation. Is there a reason why it decided to go more generic?

Is it? Part of the reason is it gives councils different options, but it would allow for a design-build type of contract under the state law that does allow that. But also, if you're that specific, part of the reason that we're finding in the charter is that sometimes when you're so specific on contracts, the language that you put in the charter, if you need to make a change to it, or if state law changes and there's different alternative methods that's allowed, that would require actually a charter amendment as well.

Okay, sounds good.

So part of the reason why we wanted to make sure that we stayed as neutral and as, you know, as still abide by state law, but give us the opportunity that if state law changes, we can still be using those methods.

Okay. And then We had polling before. And then, so are we all done with the polling or will we have polling on the final language here?

again or not? No, we will not do polling for the final language. The final language is due to the county. So we're not, the polling is done. The polling was to see which measures, if you recall, the polling, city council asked staff to poll on four items. So, and we got feedback. So based on those polling results, these three seem to have general support for passing. Okay.

I'm sorry, but Council Member, I think the questions that are before you tonight were based largely on the polling that we did already.

Okay. So this language pretty much matches the polling language. Okay. Thank you for that.

Yes, yes, yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. I had several questions. First is a question to the City Clerk. Trying to remember back two years, did we... And I can't remember what direction we gave in, unlike Council Member Sreenivasan. I didn't go back and look at it. Did we delegate basically the mayor and vice mayor to coordinate the statements and rebuttal? And then conceivably they could get other council members to sign on, other community members?

Looked, but I will go back and look right now and give you an answer momentarily.

Okay. Okay. Let me go ahead and get to my other questions of substance. First, regarding vacancy. And, you know, the devil's in the details, and it's not really about the ballot wording, but the attachment A. I'm trying to remember, and I know, so going to item D, of that attachment for, let's go through each ballot measure separately. Item D, if a vacancy is filled by appointment, the appointee shall hold office until the next general municipal election. And then we basically took out or special municipal election consolidated, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this might be for the city attorney. shouldn't we leave in or special municipal election if council decides to conduct a special election instead of the November? So it's an or special election if council makes that decision.

I'm going to defer that question to Connie or Melissa since they worked really closely on that wording.

And Melissa's here too. Yeah, Melissa is here.

Melissa Troncay, Senior Assistant City Attorney. The Charter Review Committee discussed that issue, and it was their specific recommendation to defer those elections to the general municipal election in November of even-numbered years. So if the council wanted to create an opportunity to have a special election, that would just be something different from what the Charter Review Committee recommended.

Okay. And depending upon, so other portions of that attachment lay out that if we already had two appointees, then we would automatically be calling that special election. Just trying to clarify, and I'll leave it to maybe my other council members to give feedback later on whether or not So I hadn't got to that portion that it's like I focused on the next November municipal election to make it as, let's say, cost effective from a city standpoint as possible. That being said, not restricting a future council because it's always this issue of what's in the charter and having to follow it

Sure. And those were discussions that the Charter Review Committee had. And ultimately, they sort of landed on switching this to general municipal elections and even numbered years because of the efficiency and the cost effectiveness and things like that. But certainly, it's ultimately a policy choice about the options that you want. I will note, because you mentioned, I think, like two vacancies, there were no other changes to that section. They talked about, you know, whether to make it one vacancy or two or something different. So their recommendation was essentially to keep everything the same except that required election date, which they changed from sort of, you know, the opportunity to consolidate with another statewide election. Their choice was to sort of eliminate that option and just go with the general municipal elections in November.

Okay. So, and yeah, so.

And Mayor, if I could also add, I'm sorry, you know, for the polling, that was the direction that we followed based on the Charter Review Commission and the feedback that we had received from council up until that point was focused on the November election. So that was, the polling was focused on, again, not doing special elections, but just waiting until the next November election.

Understood. Probably been years. Right. And, and, Obviously, that's the most beneficial from a city standpoint and a timing standpoint. But I don't know if I fully considered that if a council wanted to do a special election and spend the money, it's a whole other thing. So I'm not tied to that word change, but I did want to just highlight that to the rest of my council and get feedback before we end this. And so that was the attachment A for, sorry, I guess it is attachment A. A for, sorry, exhibit A for attachment one. Thanks. Going on to the second attachment, attachment two, and the public works contracts, actually, for both attachment two and attachment three, Connie, you talked about bringing an ordinance for just the settlement authority or for both of these in July? So both of these conceivably, the city council shall establish an ordinance for our public works process as well as city manager authority. Would both of these be available in July?

My understanding, and Melissa, I apologize, we're not in the same room, but we were only bringing the ordinance for the City Manager Settlement Authority because the recommendation from the Charter Review Commission in the polling was to try to set that amount, tie it to the current contracting amount, which is $250,000. And the ordinance would only go into effect if the ordinance passed. I'm sorry, the charter amendment passes in November. If the public works contract, it passes in November, that would be just an ordinance that's adopted by council without a dollar amount because the charter has been changed. And so the ordinance would just come back after the charter amendment passes, if it passes. Melissa, I don't know if you have anything else to add.

Yeah, I can just add to that. I think that for the settlement authority ordinance, the Charter Review Committee had a sort of strong interest in making a recommendation to you that the voters would know what that limit is when they vote on it. And so that was how we came up with the idea to adopt an ordinance setting that limit that would go into effect if the measure is approved. The Public Works Contracting Ordinance would... is much more complicated than that. We haven't really dug into the details of it with the purchasing division yet, or even with the public works division. We would want kind of their input on how their contracting process works. what all of these different mechanisms would kind of look like and hash out the details of the contracting process. So that one requires a little bit more work that multiple departments would need to be involved in. So it was our recommendation to kind of hold on that one because it would be a lot of potentially speculative work if the measure doesn't pass in November. But I would expect that we would bring that back to you if the measure passes, hopefully spring. But that one involves quite a bit of other work.

That was just a question because both of them are, and I definitely agree with the you know the the ordinance for settlement authority but I wondered how much of a how much of a task the you know the process of procurement and you know for public works projects really meant yeah and understanding that that there's value trying to look at operationally how to improve our process but just trying to make sure that that at least we've thought about the effort to create that ordinance now as opposed to waiting till December or waiting till after election day so that that to me is important especially when we saw the polling results um on especially that one and the settlement authority overall look good okay um let's see city clerk you have a response

Yes, Mayor. So for both Measure E and Measure F in the 2024 election, council chose to have the entire body submit an argument and they authorized the mayor and then at the time council members Mellinger and Melton to help craft that. And then the argument that was crafted came before council for a motion so that the whole body could decide that that is what you wanted to submit. And then just while we're talking about what's been done in the past for arguments, for the 2020 measure, council had authorized multiple council members to file an argument in support of the measure, and a council member was interested in an argument opposed. So council also has, like, you have the opportunity to, if there's desire, to authorize folks to submit arguments on either side, either for or against.

Okay. I appreciate that. Can't remember back that far. Thank you. And I think that is all of my questions. Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. And Mr. City Clerk, is it okay if I share my screen? I'm just going to share the page from the agenda packet with the language on vacancies.

Vice Mayor, I think the city clerk has that. If you could share page seven.

We have the slide to either one, David.

I actually want the red lines from the charter. Oh, if there's a slide with that, great.

Yes. Sorry. Give me a moment and it will be up.

And which attachment are you referring to?

Attachment one. Attachment one, page seven, if there's not a slide with the red lines.

OK, it's almost here.

Yes, there we go. And this is in response to the mayor's question. By my reading of this change, this does not prevent council from volunteering to hold a special election if we believe it is in the public interest to do so. Is that correct, Madam City Attorney? If the vacancy is filled by appointment, the appointee shall hold office until the next general municipal election. So my reading of this is that council, and so in C it says council shall dot, dot, dot elect to fill the vacancy by appointment or by calling an election. So my reading of this is that council may decide to call an election and that Section D only comes into play if counsel decides to appoint. Is that correct, Madam City Attorney?

Yes, that's how I read it.

Do you believe that there is any ambiguity on the point that counsel may choose to hold a special election under this language?

It looks clear to me. It says may elect to fill the vacancy by appointment or by calling an election. If I may, my only...

My only concern, and I understand, is the distinction between general municipal election and special municipal election, meaning if a future council appointed someone and decided to hold a special election, it is not a general municipal election. And conceivably, there could be a lawsuit. I'm guessing, and I'm just postulating at this point, that the appointed person says that he needs to serve until the next general municipal election, as opposed to the special election, which council called. And I'm doing a major hypothetical, but I am struggling to follow. May I ask you some questions? So what I'm basically saying is council appoints until and decides to run a special election. It decides to do both. Yes.

Is that even legal under Section C? My understanding is it says elect to fill the vacancy by appointment or by calling an election. This is going to get very technical. Madam City Attorney. But that's important. Does the word or... in this case mean and or as it would if I were writing a computer program or does it mean exclusive? Yes, I know. Does it mean exclusive or where you must choose one or the other but cannot choose both?

Legally, or would mean that you cannot choose both, it's one or the other.

And that is absolutely unambiguous in legal terminology.

I hesitate to say anything in legal terminology is absolutely unambiguous, but it's unambiguous in my view.

Mr. Mayor, normally I would say through the mayor, but Mr. Mayor, does that satisfy your concerns on the language? I think so.

You know, the biggest thing is I saw a potential appointment and general municipal. Okay. So basically we, so a future council could not appoint to a short term, shorter term, much like we were looking at a few years ago when, when council member Fong left well it was inherently a short term because his seat was up the following yes i know but i i'm just so i'm i'm fine with the the concept is if if count if i can if a future council decided to call a special election they could not appoint a and then they an interim Seed holder to break ties and all that until that special election. So that's, that is the only distinction that the wording as it currently stands wouldn't allow. So we could, we couldn't do both. That future council couldn't do both. And I'm fine with that. You know, they're basically, they're choosing a path, but depending upon what that path is, it's, it's, you know, especially if something happened to the mayor, you start, you start thinking of, of, you know, the mayor that I get run over by a car, heaven forbid, and, and vacancy. And so how that vacancy is filled conceivably you start a special election process because you don't want the city not to have a mayor. But do you want to maintain conceivably a 3-3 tie from a council standpoint until that election is actually finalized and certified? I'm just raising that hypothetical for a future council.

So if I may reply, I'm going to reply based on my experience on the 2018 Charter Review Committee where we considered these questions and wrote the current language. I don't think we were countenancing the idea of appointing until a special election. I think that sort of the idea that we all had when we made our proposal was that it was, as is in this language, two distinct branches. You are either appointing or calling a special election. You are not doing both. The language about consolidated special elections was because by a 5-4 vote that I lost, and I'm still... very slightly salty about perhaps, but we decided to that the correct thing was to go until, to have the candidate serve until the next election, the next scheduled election on the assumption that tacking an election, one of these onto a primary election wouldn't cost very much. And then when council member Fong resigned a few years ago, we found out that the bill for a pen, if it had to go to the primary election would in fact have been quite substantial. I don't remember what the exact number was, but I do remember it was mid six figures. It was almost as much as the special election in 2016. Now we can all express our feelings about how that would get so expensive with the registrar of voters, but that was part of the concern that encouraged me to include this in the Charter Review Committee colleagues memo in 2023. Right. So based on that, I'm not sure it was ever an option to appoint and do a special election. I'm not aware that the either Charter Review Committee, either in 2018 or in 2025, considered that question explicitly. Okay.

I'm just... reading through and thinking about different scenarios.

I think in the scenario you named of, again, God forbid, the mayor, for whatever reason, is vacant. That is where the vice mayor steps in and chairs meetings. The risk of a tie is present if there's any vacancy on the dais. However, the max, it's about what, 110 days between calling a vacancy and holding, but it's 110 days or so to call an election, Mr. City Clerk?

about 125, but you, depending on when you have your council meeting and which date you're selecting, it may end up being longer.

Sure. And in theory, Council Member Srini Vosin will know this well, at most a couple of months to certify an election. So we are looking at worst at a six month period of a vacancy on the dais. Worst case scenario, if there's a crucial tie vote in that time, it can be brought back Again, when you have seven.

Okay. I'm just raising the concern and not thinking, you know, it's, it's a hypothetical that just caught me when, when we were removing this language, then it was like, oh, is there, is there an, is there an importance of, of having that as an option? And I'm fine with the language. as it currently stands, it does send council down certain paths that being on council with a 3-3 tie for some time or just having six council members, conceivably that would be a difficult few months.

Absolutely. And seemingly could. We've had to deal with that possibility during medical leaves. But more so here. Yes.

Because there's an expected resolution. And by this date or approximate date, we will have an odd number of council members again. And here you're talking about you know, an election that conceivably is six months out or longer, depending upon, you know, what the plans are from that standpoint.

Well, I very much appreciate the thorough discussion, and I thank you for your indulgence. And I will say that I think we have enough odd council members already. Thank you.

No, and thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. It's trying to, you know, at the end of the day, the wording here is very critical. I hope that all All council has went through to a fine degree because it's a ballot language, but it's also that attachment A, which, or sorry, exhibit A, I keep messing that up, which is critical from a wording standpoint. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next up is Council Member Sell.

I had a question. So if you go the path of, say like you had a council member and then they were recently elected and then for some reason they had to resign their position very close to when they were elected. So then the council might choose to have A special election. So sometimes when you choose to have a special election, go that path. Sometimes there's a quantity of time that there's like X many. When you decide to call election, then you need to have the election. There's finite times for everything. Are there any finite times for this if the council decides to do the special election route? Or is there not?

There would still need to be 125 days between when council calls for the election and when the election takes place. Could I just, as we're talking about like this time period, right? And when we're waiting for an election to happen, at least last time there was a vacancy and council chose the appointment route. There is still in that time, right? You don't just get a resignation and necessarily appoint someone the next day. In the past, council has done an active recruitment and interviews. So there isn't, if you choose the appointment route, that doesn't necessarily mean that the next moment you, have a council member, right? You may want to do a recruitment and do interviews and that sort of thing. So an appointment isn't necessarily instantaneous. And if you were to, as the mayor was contemplating this concept of election and an appointment, the appointment, because of the process you would take deliberately to make that appointment, doesn't necessarily get you someone that much earlier than having the election.

Okay, but what if you had an election, you decided to go, the council decided to go to the election route, then since we're district elections, shouldn't there be a finite time that the council should, they decide to go to election in X many, I mean, other jurisdiction, X many days after you decide to go to election than X many days

election should be held and those kind of things so so i think if in that scenario council would want to consider the cost of different election dates when we had council member fong resign depending on the date he resigned in council's choice of election dates the lowest estimate was 227 000 and the most expensive was 3.1 million dollars so i think for council you wouldn't necessarily want to lock yourself into a specific date if you wanted to go that route you'd have some flexibility Because it's important to have a full council, but it's also important to manage the cost.

Okay.

Sounds good. Thanks.

Thank you, Council Member. Next up is Council Member Lay.

Thank you so much. And thank you to the Mayor and Vice Mayor for the robust discussion of these hypotheticals. I'm curious, we haven't had the experience before of holding a special election now that we are in districted seats, right? Do we know how much a districted election, a special election would cost?

We have not requested an estimate from ROV for that. I would envision it costing less than an at-large election. It's a special election, but there is still going to be a significant cost for the county to spin up an election that they weren't planning on having or for us to consolidate with other agencies. The more things that are on the ballot, the less costly each one of those things are as the administrative overhead is shared.

OK, so I'm going to say less than a citywide election, but probably not as little as we would hope. Something not actually a sixth of how much it would cost, more like maybe half.

Yeah, I wouldn't know if it would be half, but it would definitely be more than a sixth.

More than a sixth. Okay. Thank you. And then in the case where the mayor is incapacitated in some way, and to the mayor, if you are hit by a car, may I please suggest that you be hit by a car in a similar way to the vice mayor when he was hit by a car so that you can return to the job? Yeah. Sorry, everyone. In that case, the vice mayor mentioned that likely the vice chair, the vice mayor would be running meetings. That person would continue to be the vice mayor and not, and say, acting mayor, but the mayor would have to be because of the way that we elect our mayor democratically. The mayor couldn't be appointed like... officially appointed, we wouldn't have a mayor, right? Like Larry, like the mayor said, we would just have someone going, chairing the meetings. Okay. And so I guess that was my question with regards to the language in C, filling the vacancy by appointment. So we wouldn't be appointing a mayor. We would be saying someone's chairing the meeting. Okay. That's the extent of my questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Next up is Councilmember Cisneros.

Yes, thank you. And I want to thank you both as well and staff for joining in and offering support to that robust discussion. That was a very worthy question to consider. And I was thinking it over and then saw that or. And so now I have a question relating to that or. So it has here that within 60 days of the office being declared officially vacant for affirmative votes, basically to choose between the appointment or calling an election, but we don't have an affirmative vote requirement for filling the vacancy itself. So how many council members need to vote yes to appoint someone?

but only to make the decision of whether to appoint or call an election.

And I was just wondering why there is, and it's part of the red line too, why we have at least four affirmative votes for making the decision, but no specific number of votes for actually filling the vacancy.

May I respond through the mayor? because we were, this was a point of discussion in 2018, and, sorry, the short version is that we wanted, in the event that there were, say, two vacancies, we did not want a vacancy filled by a 3-2 vote. We wanted a 4-1 vote. We wanted to make it explicit that there must be four votes to fill the vacancy as a guardrail, In the same way that we require four votes for many other important decisions, no matter how many of us are on the dais. And should we fail to make those four votes, should council fail to make those four votes, the default option would be to go to a special election. So if there is, if for whatever reason, council cannot come to a decision on an appointment, there must be a special election. Is...

I see.

The core is the core of that.

I see. Okay. That wasn't clear to me in the language here, but that makes sense as the logic behind it. And then my other question was going to be around district election cost, but that we just talked about that. And I was just thinking at the higher relative cost, because ROV is going to require, you know, similar amount of resources to do the administrative work, but this is for a much smaller pool of voters. But we've already answered that. But those are the questions I have now. I have maybe some more that I'm marinating on, but not ready. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Next up is Council Member Chang.

Thank you. I'm wondering if in the charter review committee discussions, if there was any consideration or discussion talking about flexibility on the word shall, if it was any consideration for something like may, that they may serve until the next municipal election. I just wonder if there was something to happen, how firm is that shall?

Do you want me to jump in, Connie? Yes, go ahead. So shell means must. It's not discretionary. It means that the council must declare the office vacant and they must choose to either fill the vacancy by appointment or call an election. They can't, council can't just leave it open. They have to do something.

Oh, go ahead. I mean, in the proposed language is that they shall serve until successors elected the next general municipal election. But if there was something that happened kind of in between like a special election or something in those instances, or we find out more information about a person where we may not want them to be serving until the next general election.

Connie, do you want me to answer? I'm sorry, yes. I wasn't sure if you were going to jump in. Go ahead. So the idea here is that the council would either – choose to fill by appointment, in which case that member would be serving until the next general municipal election. Or the council could call an election, a special election, to elect someone before that next general municipal election.

Okay, great. Yeah, and what I wanted to add, the discussions at the Charter Review Committee, the intent was to have that appointment stay put until the November election. That was where a lot of the conversations were focused on, that they wanted that person that was appointed to be able to serve until the November election to avoid the costly special election or potentially having two elections in the same year. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Next up is Council Member Srinivasan.

So to Mayor's question, today in a news article, City of Fairfield has appointed an acting mayor because the mayor resigned. So it's a totally new, just for, if I- Yes, I saw that, yeah. Yeah, so, and then totally random person. It's not from the council at all. So, but anyway, Question for city clerk. Appointments, how long does it take or approximate number?

So that's really up to council. For appointments, if you look at the history, there have been council meetings where someone resigned at the meeting and during the next meeting, council appointed someone. The last time there was a resignation, council wanted to conduct a recruitment similar to what you do for boards and commissions and conduct interviews. I think it really would be up to the future council to decide. Typically, I think for public trust, it's better to do more of a recruitment than just make an appointment at your next meeting, but it really would be up to council. For the last recruitment, I think it took about two to three months because there was a desire to do some outreach and then have the interviews and then have a special meeting to make the decision.

Thank you. So in that period, there will be a 3-3 vote potentially.

And for those who were here at the last recruitment, the decision was a 3-3 vote that was a difficult decision for the group to make.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Thank you very much. I wanted to go back to something Council Member Lay said. about if the mayor's seat became vacant and how we would not be appointing a mayor. Under this language, we would have the authority to appoint a mayor. But until that point, the vice mayor would be acting mayor. And council could presumably, if the council was unhappy with that arrangement, they could fire the vice mayor at will and appoint a new acting mayor who would, from their own numbers, who would not be the mayor, but would be acting mayor. I know this is getting convoluted. One question I did have is in such a scenario, council could appoint one of their own members to mayor and then thus creating another vacancy. I would very much doubt the wisdom of that approach, but would that be legal, Madam City Attorney?

I believe that is a possibility that could happen.

Well, I'll state for the record that I would not believe I would not consider that to be a wise decision, probably. But I was curious as to whether that would be legal. No further questions. Oh, Mr. City Clerk, I regret to inform you of technical difficulties, which is that this has just decided to restart for me. So that is. I think if we go to public comment, hopefully it'll be done. But thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay. I see no other questions from council. I will go ahead and open up the public hearing on this specific item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on numbers of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. My first card is Zachary K. Followed by Steve S. Okay.

Sorry. Go ahead. Okay. I get another shot to work on my delivery. I can hear it now. The Sunnyvale City Council gave voters a choice of six council members and a directly elected mayor, even if it was the better choice, or a lawsuit that would cost millions and cannot be won now wants to extend council appointments to as long as two plus years. Maybe you should complicate things. At the same time, make the charter amendment protect against bestowing incumbency advantage on an appointee for a forthcoming election. you could add a new condition to the charter invoking its term limits. A council or mayoral appointee would be considered termed out. If they field steps on the rights, they needn't have sought appointment. They wouldn't face the appointee's incumbency advantage in the forthcoming election, no handicap encountered. Members of the California state legislature to hit their term limits are termed out for life. In comparison, this is rather minor and stops abuse. You could advocate for the appointee ballot measures, restoring the spirit of the 1974 anti-coronism reform to the charter. Another idea out there to help with passage is to cut the maximum number of appointments from two to one. You can do both things. Extending council appointments to get to the cheaper election that more people bother to vote on will bring opposition. It can be blunted if there's more to the measure. People will need to be considering your measure not on how the present city council behaves, but one 15 or 20 years out that doesn't seem as warm and fuzzy. Do people want to grant that council much longer appointments? It becomes an easier sell if the measure adds protection. But go ahead, take your chances, enjoy the conflict. There's sufficient room for opposition. With the way it is now, I'm voting no. Last week we heard that if someone runs for mayor from the three council seats that are out of sequence with the mayors and is victorious under the proposed ballot measure, we get a two-year council vacancy from their prior seat. It will likely be a common scenario for sitting council members to run for mayor. Two-year appointments aren't a hypothetical. Will there be something else in the ballot measure to compensate for this? If the unaltered version of the proposed ballot measure goes to the voters, we'll see Steve puts a stop to it. I believe Steve has a few words to say.

Thank you. Next up is Steve S. People are knocking on my door. Richard. Potentially.

Yes, could I have my slides, please?

Okay.

Tonight's handouts and slides are familiar themes that you've seen before. The measures that the city submits to Sunnyvale voters should demonstrate clear and easy, easily understood proposals, should include the benefits to the voters and residents and be transparent in all of the trade-offs. Some items to consider tonight about these measures are council vacancy risk is now inherent in Sunnyvale's election system. during mayor elections since we've gone to district elections and a directly elected mayor. It's been less than 10 years since we already modified this area of the charter. That'll be a big question. Why? Why mess with it again? Will voters be hesitant to approve additional changes to the Charter 606D making it easier to make more frequent and longer appointments without doing a corresponding adjustment in 606G to limit the number of simultaneous council or mayor appointees or interim appointees. You must remember interim appointee, we had one in 2009. How will voters react to removing the city manager settlement authority limit from the charter into an ordinance? Your intention should be transparent in the ballot question of what you intend to do dollar wise. Okay, in the ballot question. Ballot questions need to include specifics important to voters decisions. Two of the proposed ballot sections questions do not meet the standard according to my reading and a few others. We all want city election budgets and voters time to be used wisely. Each measure we submit should be easily understood by voters and be formulated to have the highest opportunity to pass. Why would you go out the gate already trying to have opposition? Go out there anticipating what is needed by the voters. The adoption of these recommendations, recommended adjustments that I've presented to you and also Zach, I believe will be proven to be critical to improving voter understanding and decreasing the chances of defeat. Often the best money spent is to hold an election. I look forward to council's consideration tonight and for you to include these recommendations. Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, one last, okay, it's hold on. I also have recollections from the 2018 and 2015 CRC, which I participated with. And I, even though your language tries to do something, the CRCs did not want to preclude having a short appointment and then filling later. And sometimes that's needed.

Thank you.

Could be needed.

That was my last speaker card in the room. Remote speakers are warned to limit their comments to the agenda item being considered. Speakers who are ruled out of order will not be given another chance to speak on this item. The title of the agenda item, of course, is adoption of these three resolutions for the municipal election in November. City Clerk, do we have any remote speakers wishing to speak on this item?

No, Mayor.

I will close the public hearing and bring it back to Council. for final discussion or emotion. Council Member Chang.

Thank you. I had a follow-up question related to the public comment about a potential up to two years appointment. So in Section 604 on term limits, It states that council elected or appointed to a term of two years or more shall constitute a four year elective term for the purposes of this section. So could you clarify if someone has just termed out, for example, would they not be eligible for an appointment for a two year appointment?

That would be correct, yeah. If they are termed out, they are termed out. Council couldn't go past that charter limit.

Okay. And then, so if they go for this two-year appointment, it also counts as a full four-year part of their electoral service or service.

So there isn't... You have a general municipal election every two years. So there isn't a scenario where under this provision, council could appoint someone for a term that is two years or longer. So by default, it would be shorter than two years. So it wouldn't count as a four-year term.

Vice Mayor, you have a follow-up question with this. I do believe there is a scenario where they can serve for about two years and two to three months, which is if the vacancy is created at a point in time where it is... Like October, for example. Right. I think as early as July or even June, a vacancy would trigger a longer than two-year appointment because you could not put that seat on that year's November elections.

Yes, sorry, you are correct, Vice Mayor. So yeah, if the vacancy occurred after July 1st of a year where there is a general municipal election, then they would most likely, they could serve more than two years. So it would count towards their first four-year term.

Correct. Okay, thank you for that clarification.

Thank you, City Clerk. And that... So ultimately, the maximum that person, so from a term standpoint, that would be considered as a single term from an appointment standpoint.

Correct. It's similar to your boarding commission appointments, right? If you appoint them to two years or longer, it counts as their first term. If it's shorter than two years, it doesn't count. This would be the same. It's just that the 125 days to call the election extends when that initial time period would be.

Thank you.

Next up is Councilmember Mellinger. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. A question for the city attorney. One of the speakers suggested that we add the language or interim appointees to the measure. Again, stretching my memory, I believe the intention when we had the no more than two appointees in 2018 was that it was inclusive of interim appointees appointed due to military service, which is about the only case where we could have interim appointees, I believe. Is that correct? Is your reading that appointees would include interim appointees?

I would consider an interim appointee to be an appointee. They are an appointee. They're not elected. Appointee is, you know, there's elected council members and appointed council members. But I agree the only scenario where that might happen would be military duty.

Active military duty. We do not have any other interim appointee procedure, and that one is mandated by federal law, correct? Correct. Okay. Does the state have any interim appointee measures that you're aware of?

Not that I'm aware of. Actually, the military leave might actually be a California law. I'd have to check on that.

Yeah, at least according to the council's policy, it's part of California's military and veterans code.

That's correct. That refreshes my recollection. That was a California law.

Thank you. I would like to have... Before we make a motion on this item, there are a couple things that I'd like to discuss concerns raised by the member of the public. I will say that I am not of a mind to. change the recommended language from the Charter Review Committee. I believe that doing so at this late hour would actually be a violation of public transparency. We've asked the Charter Review Committee, we've approved their language for consideration, for polling, for everything else to make a change at this late hour would, in my opinion, again, it would violate public transparency. I think it would be unwise. That said, with regard to the settlement authority, the ordinance that we pass in July, we could reference that in the ballot arguments but not in the ballot question, correct?

Correct.

Okay. I... do have some concerns about the idea of an automatic two-year vacancy being a thing in many... being a relatively frequent thing as a result of our mayoral election system. I do have some concerns about that. At the same time, I will say that I think that it is incumbent on councils... present and future to always be considering not just whether their actions with the propriety of their actions, but the appearance of propriety of their actions and a pattern of odd numbered council members running for mayor and, you know, If that becomes a pattern, then yes, that might be an issue for a future charter review committee to look at. At this time, I don't find it to be hugely concerning because I see no reason to believe that our odd numbered council members would be any more or less ambitious than our even numbered ones. Nor is there a guarantee that a sitting council member will always be elected mayor. But I would appreciate hearing from my colleagues' thoughts on that, perhaps before I make a motion or before someone makes a motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next up is Council Member Srinivasan.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, in fact, more than two years question I asked last time. Yeah, there is a possibility if council doesn't declare vacancy, then the election and all those things. So I had a question on the odd number council member getting elected as mayor. So does the term count as four years or two years? Because They will be elected in November, hopefully.

So are you saying, for example, someone is a council member, they're sitting on council, and then during that term, they are appointed to the office of the mayor?

No, they get elected as mayor in the following two years.

Got it. So they serve two years. So the term limits are up to three four-year terms in 16 years, and two of those could be mayor, and one is council. A maximum of three, two of which could be mayor, two of which could be a council member. So if you're serving, you serve your two years, and then you become the mayor, that first two years counts as one of those three, four-year terms in the 16-year period, because it is two years or more. It would be exactly two years.

Okay. Though they could be shown in theory, January and all those kinds of things.

I would defer to the attorney on that, but I would anticipate that The intent is it's a four-year term, and whether your first regular meeting happens to be on January 2nd versus January 11th, that that would still effectively be considered two years.

Okay. So that two years will be the four-year, it's considered as the...

It would count as one of the three terms.

Okay. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Next up is Council Member Sell.

So how would a voter know or where would they find the language that says that there's the option that the council could hold a special election instead of having appointment for two years? Would that be somewhere clear to the voter, like reading the pamphlet or something or the text or?

How would voter know? The text of this ordinance, the red lines would be in the voter information guide.

so what you see here would be printed in the voter information guide okay but but conceivably that's part of the argument the the argument for laying out very clearly for the options that go to council. Okay.

Correct. And then also, if I could also add in addition to what the clerk and the mayor just stated, there will be an opportunity after council takes action today, since these are city and staff and council driven items, there will be an opportunity for an education campaign that could be done on these measures. And some of those items could be fleshed out and shared with the potential voters.

Okay. Sounds good. Thank you.

If I could also jump in along with the ballot arguments, there will be the city attorney's impartial analysis that will explain how it will work in an impartial way.

Thank you. Council Member Lay.

Thank you so much. Sorry, there's just so much information. I am I haven't thought nearly as much about interim appointees as I should have. And I have a question for Council Member Cisneros. So we've been talking about interim appointees with regards to military leave. The assembly bill from assembly member, who is this? The assembly bill that you're part of that for parental leave, is that going to establish, it sounds like it's going to be It says it will require cities to establish a process for council members, establish a process for city council members taking parental leave. Is part of that potentially include interim appointees?

Quick answer is no. And so the Family Friendly City Councils Act that's going through the legislature right now, all it does is make it so that councils cannot deny requests for family leave, that there may not be a public hearing on that family leave, and that a council member is eligible exempt from attendance requirements and will keep their seat through the leave. But it also gives guidance to how long that leave should be in that it should not like barring there being an existing policy within the city, that it would match what city employees in that city hall receive for their leave benefits. So it, you know, for most people that's between two and four months, depending on where you are, depending on the city, and wouldn't be long enough to kind of justify any kind of interim appointment. It doesn't address interim appointments at all. It's more of just the straightforward, okay, let's make this a guaranteed thing that council members have.

How long in the past has the interim appointees served in the case of interim appointees for military service?

So it was over a year.

It was over a year, okay.

When it happened back in 2005 or so, 2004. Okay. So it all depends on what, you know, how long they're basically... given their active duty overseas.

And so in the past, this is the only case in which we've encountered this. And this is the only thing that's mandated by law that we hold the seat for. Conceivably, there are possibly other medical or professional obligations that someone might have. And in that case, generally, they would be expected to leave office. I don't know who I'm talking to.

Expected to leave office in...

It would just be, I guess, traditional. If they had professional obligations elsewhere, like, I don't know, a seasonal work or a year posting elsewhere that's not military.

I think it would be left, I'll leave it up to the city attorney, but I think it would be left up to that council to figure out whether or not they would allow a leave of absence for a specific reason.

Okay. Thank you. This is a lot of hypotheticals, but thank you for the member of the public for raising the question of interim appointees.

Thank you. And I'll just give feedback to the vice mayor. Yeah, I think... I agree that changing the wording, the recommendations from the Charter Review Committee, I think a lot of thought went into this, a lot of discussions went into this. We're now looking at kind of certain hypotheticals, and as we saw with the vacancy appointments that have basically been added in the last, 10 years after my special election in August of 2016, it's always trying to fill those hypothetical cases appropriately and taking it to the voters. So I do think that, you know, keeping the language the way it is and then, you know, adding appropriate um wording to the arguments against one thing that we didn't really discuss is whether or not council would be willing to submit so the the question of course is the submission of a statement for the whole council and conceivably bringing that back and city clerk for if we delegated that coming from the whole council do we have to bring back both the the argument for and the res and the response against to council or can we just delegate that to the mayor vice mayor and be done with it

So in, you know, there isn't really time between the deadline for the initial arguments and then the deadline for the rebuttal arguments to come to council. There isn't, there is a there is a council meeting in on the day the arguments are due. So that wouldn't really work because we would get those and they become public the next day. So as it worked in the 2024 elections, council authorized the mayor and the two council members to work on the argument. The argument was submitted to council, but then the rebuttal argument was signed by, I believe, the same council members or maybe one council member may have authorized a different council member to sign the rebuttal argument.

City Council Chambers, I think it was well five signatures, so that I think. City Council Chambers, Two or three Council members are both the four and the rebuttal and then Community leaders are a mixture of Community leaders and things that nature okay just double checking. City Council Chambers, Council members this narrows.

Yes, thank you. I wanted to quickly comment on the issue of account, you know, the potential issue of a council member running for mayor, because it is something I thought about as being a potential issue and it's called a safe seat. And it, you know, in different jurisdictions, it's a comment, actually a council member Dean did this recently, but running for a state assembly and, But it wasn't a safe year. But what, it's not very common, but essentially it's like if you run and you lose, you get to keep your seat. But if you run, you get to move up in some capacity. That just really hasn't been the culture in the city. And it just remains to be seen. We haven't had enough elections. But what other cities have done when it does become a problem, because that is, just because it hasn't been a problem so far doesn't mean it won't be. especially for running for mayor. Other cities have amended their charter to have it so that a council member will forfeit their current seat if they were to choose to run either for mayor or another seat in a safe year. But that wasn't discussed in the charter and I can't put that language in right now. It just hasn't, and I agree with the vice mayor in that we've had uh you know a number of hearings on this and to change the substance of the um measure at this point that would feel very contrary to public transparency considering all the conversation and opportunity we've had to do that so far so just really looking for wordsmithing but i don't have anything more on that and the ballot you know i'm i'm happy to designate the mayor and vice mayor to craft that amongst themselves and make a decision on what the strongest signatures on that piece of paper would be and just to make that easy and streamlined and knowing that you both will do a good job because you have before. So thank you.

Thank you. Vice Mayor Mellinger. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. At this point, I am ready with a motion.

Okay.

Go right ahead. I move staff recommendation alternatives one through three. Actually, I'm moving alternative four with modifications, which is alternatives one through three, and then to authorize the mayor and vice mayor to draft arguments and rebuttals for those measures.

Thank you. And I'll second that with the friendly amendment of Also choosing, the mayor and vice mayor choosing the signatories for those statements.

Accepted.

Thank you. To your motion.

This is the culmination, almost penultimate culmination, of a very long process that we kicked off in November of 2023. The colleague's memo that I co-authored to... kick off a charter review committee and examine many questions pertaining to the governance of the city. These measures, I think, will go a long way to ensuring the continued smooth and efficient functioning of Sunnyvale City government. I I'm especially excited about the design-build, the potential legalization of design-build contracting. Design-build contracting offers a number of efficiencies and improvements in outcomes over traditional design-bid-construct-bid-contracting. In terms of the city manager's settlement authority, it strikes me as just basic good governance. If we set a contracting authority, that's considerably greater leeway than settlement authority in general. In terms of vacancies, at the end of the day, I do not think it is a good idea to have two elections for the same seat in one year. I simply do not believe that. I think that were that to happen, well, we know that when it happened in 2016, voters were left scratching their heads and members of the public were not happy at the amount of money that the city had to spend to do that. To the extent that members of the public were asking council to break the law. I do not want to see such a situation again. I do understand the concerns about a possible structural safe seat. If that becomes a pattern in Sunnyvale City politics, that's an item that can be addressed. I wish those concerns had been brought to the Charter Review Committee because they might well have come up with a modification to deal with that. but at this late point i do believe it would be a violation of public transparency to modify the proposed balance ballot language especially after the polling therefore you know i believe this is a strong set of measures i believe that the passage of these measures will improve city government and therefore i respectfully urge my colleagues i vote thank you thank you vice mayor councilmember serena boston

I will be supporting this motion and then let me start with the easiest one, the public works contracting and city manager authority, those are operating operation efficient operating efficiency. measures which is really required to make city efficient regarding the vacancy. I agree with the vice mayor. Having too many elections or two elections for the same seat may not be the right thing. Apart from Sunnyvale in 2016, there is a current congressional seat where there are two elections back to back, one in August and one in November, which is totally confusing. And then we had a U.S. Senate race where there was a partial term and full term and all those confusions. I think what we have is fairly robust. It may not solve all the edge conditions. And now we will be able to anticipate all the conditions at this stage. So based on what I understand now and based on the data we have, I think this is the right resolution. And then I hope... Our voters will approve these measures, and then we can go forward. Thank you very much, and I will be supporting this motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Sell.

Yeah, I think all these measures, there's been... lot of thought put into this by some of the most active and most involved citizens in Sunnyvale and we've come to these and all of these provide a balance such as for the You can have an appointment or you can have a special election. So it still allows for both. And then for the public works, you are allowed some flexibility into choosing the best method as long as it abides by California law. And the last one with the authority, I think that, you know, gets rid of more, makes it more efficient. So all of these I think are good in terms of providing balance.

So I'll be supporting this. Thank you, Council Member. And Council Member Srinivasan forgot something.

Thanks, Mayor. I forgot to mention about authorizing Mayor and Vice Mayor for the statement. And then also I agree with Mayor when we should have community leaders also providing input into this. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Lay.

Thank you. I will be voting in support of this motion. I'm excited to make the governance of the city easier for our staff members. I'm excited about the design-bid-build. That was a benefit to us when I was a member of the school board, and I want to very much thank the members of the Charter Review Committee for their work in this process and for the members of the public who have remained engaged. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Chang.

Thank you. I wanted to thank the Charter Review Committee and staff for getting to this point. I'll also be supporting the motion. On the vacancies, the public comment says that filling by appointment would likely be two years in length. I don't think it would be likely, but if it is, I do like the safeguard that it would count towards a full four-year term. And I did want to comment on last year how confusing it got with the assessor's race, that that could have been multiple elections, and there was also an additional one around Christmas. So sometimes that might be really confusing if there's also special elections happening at the county. So thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Cisneros.

Yes, thank you. I'd like to thank the Charter Review Commission. Really long hours, really hard work, and a lot of engagement on some really complex and technical topics. And it was just, you know, I felt very fortunate to have volunteers in our community who were willing to provide such an excellent work product to us. And of course, I want to thank members of the public who have provided feedback that have been valuable to both the final product and to the way that we think about things. And I want to thank the voters for their consideration in November, if this does indeed pass. Council and of course staff for all your hard work in bringing together all of these ideas providing that knowledge of that administrative knowledge that we need to make these really good decisions and i hope that this makes our city stronger and it as much as i would love for something to be everything to everyone and be perfect and consider every possible thing um not just here but in you know all the things i do um all the decisions I have to make in my life, it's just not possible. And I was part of that process to appoint a council member. you know, years ago, and that brought up the necessity like, hey, we're going to need to look at this again because it didn't quite work the way that we thought it would, the way we had it. So, and that's just the way it goes. We try it, and we change it, and I'm sure that this charter will be changed many times. uh after this and each time i just hope we get a little bit better and a little bit closer to having it be the best thing to serve our residents so thanks for doing that with us all and with that i'll vote yes i'll vote yes in all of it thank you council member vice mayor mellinger and i just wanted to take one second to echo the thanks of my colleagues to staff and the charter review committee um

When I served on a charter review committee, we reviewed one section of the charter. This body reviewed our entire city charter and considered, I believe, dozens of possible amendments. The amount of work that entailed was monumental, and the city owes every member of that committee a great debt of gratitude. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yeah, I'll start there. I just want to thank the Charter Review Committee and echo those words. I know that they spent a lot of time having those discussions and breaking up the Charter. So being on the last Charter Review Committee in 06-07 when we went through page by page and talked about lots of, let's say, different hypotheticals and you know, outdated language. I think for me, it's a great, you know, the outcome from this group was fantastic in that they took it very seriously. They had robust discussions and watching some of those meetings remotely was actually very informative. And, you know, ultimately the set of recommendations they came back with was very good. ultimately what we've ended up with here, the final three after going through the polling process, and thanks to staff, thanks to the consultants for ending up with this ballot wording, the final exhibits. Those are part of the critical things. The next steps, of course, to me, it's critical that we get the appropriate ordinance, especially for the settlement authority. It's critical that we start composing those arguments to make sure that we sell this. And we've learned our lesson as far as kind of grouping too many ballot measures into one, you know, letting each one stand on its own and understanding, you know, from a polling standpoint that educated voters and that will be incumbent upon the council members to educate them, the members in their district as much as possible what these actually mean because especially two of them and even all three to some degree are somewhat technical, somewhat hypothetical in some cases and understanding why we have a charter and what these changes mean. Being a mayor who was elected in a special election, yes, this is the third set or ultimately third set of changes regarding vacancy since that election and it continues to change and giving council the appropriate flexibility to appoint and make the right decisions in the long run I think is critical. Thank you, and thank you for Council for giving the authority to myself and the Vice Mayor to hopefully write the arguments and find community members that are in charge and willing to step up to help educate. So thank you for that. With that, City Clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

The motion carries 7-0.

Thank you. And with that, we'll take an eight-minute recess and come back at 8.55 p.m. Thank you. Let's go ahead and reconvene and move on to our next item. Item 26-0605, approve a memorandum of understanding between the City of Sunnyvale and the Sunnyvale Employees Association, IFPTE, Local 21, and adopt two resolutions. Is there a staff report?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of Council, Heather Ruiz, Human Resources Director. This item is requesting that Council approval of a Memorandum of Understanding between the City of Sunnyvale and the Sunnyvale Employees Association, known as SEA, IFPTE Local 21, and the adoption of two resolutions to enact the changes that contained in that MOU. SEA represents our non-management, miscellaneous, full-time employees at the City of Sunnyvale. It's our largest bargaining group at the city, representing approximately 560 city employees across all departments. The current MOU expires on June 30, 2026. The city and SEA held eight bargaining sessions between April 1 and June 8 to negotiate this successor agreement. A tentative agreement was reached on June 8, and the city was notified on June 17 that SEA membership ratified the agreement with an overwhelming majority, with about 82% of their membership voting yes. Unrepresented classified confidential employees receive the same treatment for wages and benefits as SEA employees, so this action also provides the same salary and benefits changes recommended for the SEA employees for those classified confidential employees as well. This agreement is a four-year agreement expiring on June 30, 2030. A summary of the changes in the MOU are listed in the report to Council and a complete version of the MOU with both red line changes as well as a clean final version are attached to the item and available for review. This was a very positive process. We were able to reach an agreement that achieved the goals set out in our mutual areas of interest, including recruitment and retention and market comparability. With that, I will keep my report brief, as I know Council has heard a lot of the details of this previously, and I'm available if Council has any questions.

Thank you. Are there any questions from Council? Seeing, oh, there we go. Council Member Chang.

Apologies, thank you. Was the 82%, was that for SEA or SEIU? Could you repeat that? SEA. SEA, okay, thank you.

Thank you. I'll go ahead and open to the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine in your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City clerk, do you have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

No, Mayor.

I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council. Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I move staff recommendation alternative one. Thank you.

And I'll second. Second. Thank you, Council Member Srinivasan. To your motion.

I would like to thank our negotiating staff, Human Resources Director Ruiz, Assistant City Manager Sarah Johnson-Rios, who also played a major role in these negotiations, our consultants. I would also like to thank the Sunnyvale Employees Association for working with us to get a good bargain for all parties and to get it delivered on time before the start of the new fiscal year. I think this is a Great agreement, and I look forward to its approval. Please vote yes. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Sal.

I also want to thank staff. And I want to thank staff who is in HR and also the Sunnyvale Employees Association. It was very impressive to see the amount of collaboration that occurred and to be able to understand from a management point of view and the Sunnyvale Employees Association. It was just so impressive to see what can be accomplished when there's great trust on both sides and great ability to see where there could be common ground. So I was just hugely impressed with that process. So thank you very much for all that work. And, you know, it's good for the city, good for the employees. So it's all around good. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Lay.

Thank you to staff and thank you for the negotiating team of SEA. I think this is a good agreement. I think that we are in a fairly unique position within the area with the ability to bring wages up at this time. A lot of other cities are struggling financially, but because of Sunnyvale's forethought in our financial planning, I'm glad that we're able to to make this happen for our city employees. Additionally, I wanted to highlight the addition of parental leave that city workers will be able to access now. This is something that I and my colleagues are passionate about, and I'm glad to see this will be accessible to our employees. Thank you.

Thank you. And I'll be supporting this motion, you know, by approving this contract and our city council isn't just signing on the terms of the adjustments. They're basically making a profound statement of our commitment to, you know, good negotiations and creating an environment where, you know, our employees can have dedicated careers and making it viable for attracting new employees. You know, SEA and IFPTE are almost half of our city staff and ultimately they are the the real heart of the heart of Silicon Valley. You know, they keep that heart beating smoothly, but this agreement ensures that we can continue to retain and, of course, recruit the best talent at the end of the day. And to me, thanks to, you know, thanks to all the negotiation staff. It's not easy to go through this. And so I just want to thank our city staff that went through that as well as the negotiating team coming to a conclusion before the current contract ends. And so thank you to council for holding and agreeing to this special meeting to approve that final agreement. But to me, and it's like to every Sunnyvale Employee Association member, I just want to say thank you for all that you do. And thank you to staff for going through this process, the negotiating team, and finishing it within the deadline that was critical. And ultimately also having those regular meetings, which we found to be very successful. So thank you. Happy to support this motion. And with that, City Clerk, please conduct the vote.

The motion carries 7-0.

Thank you. And our final item is item 26-0606. Approve a memorandum of understanding between the City of Sunnyvale and the Service Employees International Union and adopt two resolutions. Is there a staff report?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Heather Ruiz again. This will sound very familiar. This item is requesting Council approval of a memorandum of understanding between the City of Sunnyvale and the Service Employees International Union, SEIU, and the adoption of two resolutions to enact the changes contained in that MOU. SEIU is a small bargaining unit representing 42 classified part-time benefited employees in the City of Sunnyvale. The current MOU expires on June 30, 2026. The city and SEIU held five bargaining sessions in May and June to negotiate this successor agreement. A tentative agreement was reached on June 8th and the city was notified on June 18th that SEIU membership ratified the agreement by a resounding yes. I didn't get an exact percentage from them. This agreement is a four-year agreement expiring on June 30, 2030. A summary of the changes in this MOU are listed in the report to Council, and a complete version of the MOU with redline changes, as well as a final clean version, are attached to the item and available for review. This was also a very positive and collaborative process, and we were able to reach agreement that achieved the goals set out in our mutual areas of interest, which was primarily internal equity with SEA, given that the classifications in these two bargaining units crossover. With that, I will conclude my brief report and I'm available to counsel if you have any questions.

Thank you. Are there any questions, staff? Seeing none, I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please put a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now. or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City Clerk, do we have any remote speakers wishing to speak on the silent?

No, Mayor.

Okay, I'll close the public hearing and bring it back to Council for a motion. Vice Mayor Mellinger. Thank you very much. I move staff recommendation. Thank you. Council Member Sreenivasan. Second. Second.

Thank you. To your motion. I believe everything I said about the previous process applies here. Thank you to staff. Thank you to SEIU. Please vote yes.

Thank you. And I'll be supporting this motion. SEIU is a bit smaller as far as representation and members within the city, but just as important. So thank you for finalizing this contract also. I'm happy to support this motion with that. City Clerk, please conduct the vote.

The motion carries 7-0.

Thank you very much. Next, our council member reports on activities from intergovernmental committee assignments. Council member Sal.

Hi, I'm Sunnyvale's representative to VTA. So there was a grand jury report that was submitted. So VTA appreciates the work of the grand jury and will carefully review all the findings and the recommendations. And VTA will formally provide a response within the required 90-day time frame. This Friday, we will be having from the morning to noon, several hours in which the board will be reviewing the BART Silicon Valley. And also at every board meeting, we have a summary of the BART Silicon Valley in addition to the committee that is also looking at that. So I just went to make that comment.

Thank you, Council Member. So when the response is issued, can you forward it to Council also?

Sure.

Thank you. And I know that... I gave an update last week, but since our last meeting, I was actually in Kern County last Thursday for a ribbon cutting as chair of Silicon Valley Clean Energy. There's a tumbleweed energy storage project that officially went online on June 1st. The project is really a historic milestone for the state's electrical grid. It marks the first major eight-hour long-term energy storage in our state. It was ultimately commissioned by a group of CCAs, and so Silicon Valley Clean Energy being one of them, But it was developed by REV Renewables. It ultimately gives the grid about 128 megawatts of discharge capacity that's not on the grid currently. And so the project moves SVC significantly closer to bridging that sunset gap, ensuring that... Even when the sun goes down, the members in our district have clean, 100% clean, stored carbon-free electricity. So to me, it was great to see. It was a little hot being in Central Valley during the afternoon, but great to see local investment making a difference as far as the overall grid. So happy to do that.

Next up, Mr. Kirby. Yes, thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to comment since Council Member Selle brought it up. There are two grand jury reports that were recently released, one on VTA BART Station and one on Street Main. And so staff will be actually bringing responses from the City of Sunnyvale to those reports to Council. We're currently shooting for late August for that agenda item.

Thank you. Next up are non-agenda items and comments. Council Member Tso.

Hi. I'd like to make a statement about a council priority project that I like to, that I will be, during the time when we submit it formally i will be submitting it but i just wanted to mention it right now and so uh city clerk could you post it yeah so um my council priority um project proposal would be the development of recreation cricket field at baylands park baylands park with 70 acres of developed parkland in North Sunnyvale, is a successful joint venture between Santa Clara County and the city of Sunnyvale. The development of a natural grass recreation cricket field at Baylands Park could provide more access to recreational sporting opportunities for residents in North Sunnyvale, given that adult-sized cricket field exists currently in South Sunnyvale and in Central Sunnyvale. And the large cricket field footprint allows for other shared uses, including youth soccer and other recreational youth sports and eco-friendly water-soluble field paints that are formulated to fade over time could mark the field by authorized users. And this field would not use lighting, artificial lighting, since Baylands Park is a protected wetlands that serves as a wild bird sanctuary and habitat for over 200 species of birds. And to keep people safe, the field could be situated further away from playgrounds and walking pathways and picnic areas for consideration of not using fences. So I just went to make a statement about that.

Thank you, council member. And I just have a question for Mr. Kirby. Um, so I thought, and I know we've said it in private discussions, but I also thought it came up at, at the budget workshop or the priority, the council's priority workshop. I can't remember which one, um, the concept of adding, a cricket pitch was going to be part of next year's projects budget, is that correct, Mr. Kirby, or can you clarify that more?

Yes, that's correct. I don't recall where it came up either, but originally there was a study issued to do a cricket stadium at Baylands Park. That work fell through both from Major League Cricket and the county, wanting to, to the county who owns Baylands Park and therefore controls it, wanting to hold any kind of cricket facility, major cricket facility or professional or semi-pro cricket facility at the fairgrounds. So I initiated a discussion with the county about could we do a recreational facility and they agreed that that would be an acceptable use. So somewhere along the line, I thought I communicated that we would be including a project in the project budget that would City Council Chambers, Do that way in the in the upcoming project cycle that would include a recreational facility at baylands park. City Council Chambers, For cricket.

City Council Chambers, Thank you city manager. City Council Chambers, Thank you Council member, are there any other non agenda items or comments. City Council Chambers, Seeing none. City Council Chambers, city manager, do you have any non agenda items or comments. Nothing tonight. Thank you. Okay. With that, we will adjourn the meeting at 9.14 p.m. Thank you all who participated tonight. Have a good evening. Good night.