City Council - Regular Meeting

Heat. Heat.

Recording in progress. Good evening everyone. Thank you for coming. Welcome to the city council regular meeting this Monday evening, May 18th. Please rise with me for the pledge of allegiance. 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. Thank you. City clerk, can you please call the role? With pleasure. Mayor Lorraine. Council member Diaz Nash here. Council member Sphere Gaditzki here. Deputy Mayor Fernandez here. Mayor Lraine

here. Mayor uh Council Member Newsome. Yes. here.

Thank you and welcome. We are excited to be here in person with options for those who choose not to be in person to still participate virtually. Thank you for your cooperation and for helping us maintain an efficient and accessible meeting environment. There are several ways to participate in public comment tonight. For those attending in person, you may complete a yellow request to speak slip and hand it to the city clerk. If you are participating remotely, you may use the raise your hand feature in Zoom and you will be called on at the appropriate time. If you're calling in by phone, please press star9 to raise your hand. And when you're called upon, you may press star six to unmute. These options for public comment will remain available until I close public comment periods for each particular item. Finally, if you're watching us on YouTube, please just note that we do not currently have a live public comment feature in YouTube itself. You'll need to join our Zoom webinar to participate in public comment. Use the access information listed in the agenda which is on our website, city of samonteo.org. Thank you. Please bear with us as we have a number of ceremonial items tonight. Plenty to celebrate. Um, we'll begin with item one, which is Asian-American Heritage Month. We have a proclamation and we would like to invite to the podium Wesley Taoka, the executive director of the Sanontto Japanese American Community Center. Thank you, Mr. Tala, for being with us. I have a proclamation I'd like to read and then uh if you have any words you'd like to share, you'll be welcome to do so and then we can take a a picture with the council. Whereas Sonteo County is home to dynamic

Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities with nearly 31% of Sonteo County residents identifying as Asian or Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander. And whereas during Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the city of Sonteo celebrates the contributions and influence of notable AAPI figures and embraces the cultural traditions that enrich our city. And whereas San Monteo is partnering with community organizations to celebrate AAPI Heritage Month by providing special events and learning opportunities where residents can broaden their understanding and appreciation for this community's traditions and history. And whereas AAPI Heritage Month is both a time to embrace the unique backgrounds and experiences that make us who we are and a time to reflect on the painful chapters of our nation's past. And whereas the adoption of resolution 39 in 2020 demonstrated our commitment to combating harassment, hateful rhetoric, and violent acts against the AAPI community by formally condemning racism and xenophobia, and affirming our dedication to fighting discrimination in all facets of our society. And whereas as one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse groups in the country, the AAPI community brings great vibrancy to the fabric of our nation. Now, therefore, I, Adam Lorraine, mayor of the city of Sonteo and on behalf of the city council, do hereby proclaim the month of May 2026 as Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Tala,

um, Mayor Lorraine and city council, thank you very much for um, commemorating Asian her American Heritage Month and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Um, on behalf of the Santale Japanese American Community Center, thank you very We thank you very much. Um we are just one of the many many different groups Asian and Pacific Islander groups in Satan but um and we are downtown at the corner of four fifth and Claremont Street. We have different activities uh bonesai club, flower arrangement, teaching, martial arts classes and we also have um different small events like just yesterday we had a bonsai show and in April we had a kabana show. So we invite you to come and visit us. Um we're open during the week and we have activities almost every day of the week. So, we thank you very much for honoring us and uh we look forward to seeing you at our center.

Thank you very much, city council.

Thank you for Thank you for representing us. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Thanks very much for being here. Appreciate you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. In addition, I would like to just acknowledge uh firstly that our parks and recck department had a wonderful cultural uh celebration in Central Park earlier this month as part of uh celebrations and it was it was wonderful. I really appreciated uh a number of activities in our central park. So, thank you to uh the parks and recck department for making that possible. and I I see uh Debbie Soon and a number of folks from Self-Help for the Elderly, another nonprofit organization uh very entrenched in the Asian and Pacific Islander community. Thank you for being with us and uh I imagine we'll be hearing from you for an agenda item later tonight, but just thank you for being with us and I'll move on to the next ceremonial item, Jewish American Heritage Month. I have a proclamation. Um, we uh invited Rabbi Lisa Kingston from Peninsula Temple, Beth L, to join us. Um, unfortunately just at uh at the last minute, something didn't work out and she wasn't able to join us in person, but she did provide some prepared remarks which I will read on her behalf. Uh, I'll begin with a proclamation. Whereas Jewish Americans have been an important part of the American story and have greatly contributed to all areas of American life and culture since our nation's earliest days. And whereas on

April 20th, 2006, the federal government proclaimed May as Jewish American Heritage Month, stating, "As a nation of immigrants, the United States is better and stronger because Jewish people from all over the world chose to become American citizens." And since then, proclamations in support of Jewish American Heritage Month have been made by presidents of the United States annually. And whereas generations of Jews have fled to the United States in search of a better life for themselves and their families. And these immigrants made invaluable contributions in support of equality and civil rights through their leadership and achievements. And whereas Jewish Americans connect to their Jewish identity in a variety of ways such as culturally, ethnically, religiously, and by following Jewish ethics and values. And whereas Jewish Americans are racially, ethnically, socially, politically, and economically diverse. And around 25% of Bay Area Jewish households include a person of color, increasing to nearly 40% of households if the head of the household is younger than 35. And whereas the city of San Monteo shares an obligation to condemn and combat anti-semitism wherever it exists to include Jewish Americans in all facets of civic life and to stand with the Jewish American community against hatred or bigotry in our city and country. And whereas there is a need for education and policies that are culturally competent when describing, discussing, or addressing the impacts of being Jewish in all aspects of American society, including discourse and policy. And whereas we celebrate the rich and

diverse heritage of the Jewish American community, including those who live, work, and play in San Monteo. And whereas we recognize Jewish American commitment to civic engagement and how Sonteo has been enriched by local Jewish institutions and synagogues. Now therefore, I, Adam Lorraine, mayor of the city of Sonteo, and on behalf of the city council, do hereby proclaim the ma the month of May 2026 as Jewish American Heritage Month. Be it further resolved, Samato will continue efforts to confront anti-semitism and other forms of hate impacting the Jewish community, support local education about the diversity of our Jewish American community, and integrate Jewish-American culture into future programs, activities, and ceremonies. Thank you. Uh, and there were some remarks from Rabbi Lisa Kingston from Peninsula and Temple Bethl here in our city. Uh, that I just realized I was asked to read beforehand, but I apologize and I will now read afterward. Um, my name is Lisa Kingston and I'm the senior rabbi of Peninsula Temple Bethl. We've been a reformed Jewish community in Sonteo for 75 years, celebrating our 75th anniversary this year. While I apologize for the last minute conflict, I'm so grateful to the mayor and members of the city council for this meaningful recognition of Jewish American Heritage Month. American Jews and particularly the Jewish community in San Monteo contribute to all walks of communal life. Whether we are in civic service, educational leadership, artists, or other business and professional roles, Jews follow the wisdom of our sage,

Rabbi, Rabbi Hillel, who taught, "Do not separate oneself from the community." This month is also an opportunity to celebrate the contributions of the Jewish community and also to share the richness of Jewish history, values, and tradition with pride and openness. At a time when anti-semitism is rising across our nation, public moments like this matter deeply. They remind Jewish families, children, and neighbors that we are seen, valued, and welcomed. Celebrating Jewish heritage publicly is not only an act of recognition, it is also an act of solidarity and courage. On behalf of the Jewish community of San Monteo, thank you for standing with us, for honoring Jewish American Heritage Month, and for helping build a city where diversity is celebrated and where every community can live openly and proudly. So, we thank Rabbi Kingston for these words. Now, we have another ceremonial item, and this is kind of two items in one, so please bear with us. But we're happy to celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month and Police Activities League celebration of the 10th anniversary of their mental health and wellness run, which is coming up later this month. So, we'd like to invite Jackie Almas from Al Cove Youth Behavioral. Uh she is the youth behavioral health program manager at Alco which is in our fair city of Sonteo. Yes, I apologize. I think we'll we'll take one group at a time. Two proclamations. Thank you everybody for bearing with us. We have a lot to celebrate and we we'll we'll do it one

at a time here. I have a proclamation for Alco. Thank you for joining us. and then uh if you have anything you'd like to share, you you'll be welcome to do so. Thank you for joining us. Whereas in 2021 to 2023, 12% of Sonteo County adults likely had serious psychological distress. And Sano County youth in grades 7, 9, and 11 reported social emotional distress in the past 12 months. And whereas every day millions of people face stigma related to mental health and substance use conditions and they may feel isolated and alone going years before receiving any help. If left untreated, they have life expecties 25 years shorter than the general population. And whereas while mental health conditions are common across all types of demographics, certain communities face inequitable access to services, including people of color, the LGBTQ plus community, youth, and older adults. And whereas mental health and substance use conditions are treatable health conditions. and people who have mental health and substance use conditions can recover and lead full and meaningful lives. And whereas San Mateo residents have access to many behavioral health services at no cost. And whereas the Sonteo partners are collectively organizing activities that Sonteo County community members can participate in throughout the month, including free in-person and virtual events, advocacy days, and social media campaigns. And whereas the Sanonteo City Council wishes to increase the public's

knowledge of signs and symptoms of mental health and substance use conditions, professional and self-help resources and self-care practices. Now therefore, I, Adam Lorraine, mayor of the city of Sonteo, and on behalf of the city council, do proclaim, sorry, I hereby recognize May 2026 as mental health awareness month in the city of Sonteo to enhance public awareness of mental health to help end the stigma and direct members of the community to resources and support for mental health and substance use conditions. Thank you. And thank you for joining us, Jackie, and all cove members.

Yes, thank you guys so much for the opportunity to um accept the proclamation today. Um we had just a few uh slides put together to just give a little bit more information about Alco if time allows. Um so thank you guys so much for the opportunity. I'm Jackie Alms like you guys said and joining me today is Hi everyone, I'm Ein Lee. I'm a member of the Alco Samato youth advisory group and I'm also a senior at Berlingame High School. Hello everyone. My name is Valeria Ramirez. I'm the peer coordinator with Al Samato.

Oh, next slide please. So this is the agenda that we are going to go over today. We're going to introduce ALCOV the services that we offer. We're also going to go over some AL cove data and then we're going to talk about our upcoming events and then we're going to end the slideshow with a Peninsula Healthcare District spotlight. To start off, what is Al Cove? Alco Sanato is a youth wellness drop-in center for those ages 12 to 25 to access services and also join in on workshops and just find community and have a space to chill especially in a world that can be very overwhelming for youth today. It's a space designed for families in the community and for youth by youth. And a big part of how we do that is through the Alco Sanato Youth Advisory Group that I have been a part of for the past two years. And it's a group of those ages 16 to 25 who are really just um there to co-create and co-design the services and events that are hosted by all cove samonteo to ensure that we are serving the community and the youth in it. Next slide, please. And here's a quick rundown of the services provided at alcove. And so to begin, we have education and employment, which are services helping youth um achieve their career and educational goals. There's peer support where youth can connect with other peers in the community through shared experiences. There's family support services designed specifically for parents and guardians to help support their children. There's substance use services to help youth navigate drug and alcohol add- addictions. There's obviously mental health services where youth can learn about different coping skills and also support their own well-being and mental health. And there's also includes group therapy, individual therapy, and also psychiatry services. And last but not least, physical health services where youth can learn more about sexual and reproductive health services and also just learn more about their own physical

health and how to care for themselves. Next slide, please. And here is also a quick glance at the data we've collected at Alco Samato since we've opened two years ago. And so we've had a total of 5,134 visits at Alco Sano. 318 events held. Um 1,870 visits for services. The specific services provided or people access are below. So if you're curious, you can look more at that. There's been a total of 3,264 non-service visits and 601 young people have enrolled at Alco Samato which basically means that these youth are consistently accessing services and just going to all co Samato on a consistent basis. Next slide please.

We wanted to make sure that our programs are impactful and we're making a difference in our community. So we um decided to begin gathering some feedback from the people who were accessing services at AL cove and since October 2025 we began asking youth that were coming to us to complete a post visit uh survey and then we have u gathered this information and then in this chart we can see that we have um decreased u you know depressive symptoms there has been a big improvement in their general symptoms family and friends relationship, coping skills, and this is the work that we wish to continue doing for our Sato community and for many youth that really need to help and then we really want to support their well-being and their mental health. Next slide. Uh so to wrap up, we're just highlighting two events that we have upcoming in honor of mental health awareness. We have our open mic night and then we have some events in June as well. Next slide. So visit us. We're really close by, less than a five minute drive away. Um we're open Monday through Friday from 1 to 7:00 p.m. And you can also reach us at that information. And then next slide, and it'll be the last one. Thank you guys so much for the opportunity. So um as I didn't share earlier, but Peninsula Healthcare District, um Alve is one of our programs. And so I just wanted to just highlight another initiative that we're doing in terms of behavioral health, which is um partnering with Maro. It's a digital screening platform that's going to help schools in our area identify students that are in need earlier. And so we have lots of other behavioral health pro um programs in the works in support of mental health. And so thank you guys so much for the opportunity today.

Thank you very much. And uh Councilman, we can have a photo of And and while we're moving, I'll just note that if anyone is in the back looking for a seat, we happen to still have some seats closer to the front. Please feel free to take a look. We are not completely full. Thank you. So good to see you. Good to see you again. Thank you so much.

You want to join us? Let me squeeze in here. Congratulations. Great to see you again for being here. Thank you. Thank you for volunteering. Thank you. And now we will celebrate the Police Activities League 10th anniversary mental health and wellness run. We have a recognition. We have a proclamation. We have the Chief of Police, Ed Barbarini, um, and others from PL. Thank you for being here. And I have some words here and then can ask the chief if he has any words. Whereas the San Monteo Police Activities League or PAL or PAL has proudly served the youth and families of the Sanonteo community since 1997, building positive relationships between law enforcement officers and young people through educational, recreational, athletic, and mentoring programs. And whereas in 2026, Sonteo PL in collaboration with Stride for Awareness celebrates the 10th anniversary of its annual 5K and 10K runalk and wellness fair, a community event dedicated to promoting health, wellness, connection, and mental well-being for residents of all ages. And whereas this annual event has brought together thousands of participants, volunteers, sponsors,

community organizations, and local families over the past decade in support of healthy lifestyles and strong community partnerships. And whereas proceeds from the event help support help support vital PAL programs that provide mental health services, mentorship, academic support, athletics, leadership development, violence prevention, and enrichment opportunities for underserved and at risk youth throughout the community. And whereas the wellness fair portion of the event connects residents with valuable health, wellness, and community resources while fostering inclusion, engagement, and a spirit of unity across San Monteo. And whereas the success of this event reflects the dedication of PAL staff, volunteers, sponsors, city partners, law enforcement port personnel, and community members who continue to invest in the well-being and future success of our local youth. Now therefore, I, Adam Lorraine, mayor of the city of Sonteo, and on behalf of the city council, do recognize Sonteo Pal for celebrating the 10th annual mental health matters 5K and wellness fair. Thank you. Uh, good evening, mayor, members of the council. On behalf of the both the police department and PAL, I want to thank you for recognizing mental health mental health awareness month and for helping us celebrate the 10th anniversary of PAL's mental health and wellness run or in my case, a brisk walk. Um, this event has become much more than a run. Over the past decade, it has grown into a powerful reminder that mental health, mental wellness matters, that community matters, and that no one struggles alone. Mental health touches everyone, every family, every neighborhood, and every profession, including law enforcement.

We see every day how important compassion, connection, and early support can be. Events like this help us break down stigma and encourage open conversations about wellness, resilience, and seeking help when needed. I'm especially proud of the role PAL continues to play in bringing our community together in a positive and meaningful way. PAL represents partnership, mentorship, and opportunity for young people and families throughout Sanonteo. The wellness run reflects those same values by promoting healthy lifestyles, community engagement, and support for one another. I also want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our donors, sponsors, and community supporters, including Alco. They'll be they'll be with us um on the 30th. Um they support us in meaningful meaningful ways. Um, for anyone interested in supporting Wellness Run or learning more about PAL, the PAL program and its work in our community, I'd encourage you to visit our web page. Every contribution and every partnership helps helps us continue creating a positive opportunity for young people and strengthening community connections. I'd like to thank all of our volunteers, runners, walkers, city staff, our police officers, and community members who have supported this event over the last 10 years. Your commitment has helped us make this tradition something truly special. I'd like to recognize a few people up here with me. Uh the the leadership for this event um is led by three of our own, Maria I Maria Ivich, Katie Smallwood, and Lieutenant Kimber Joyce make all of this happen. And I'd be remiss if I did not recognize um Lordis Enrique and the Enrique family who really made all of this happen through Stride for Awareness. Thank you to the to the Enrique family. I'd just like to thank you again for this recognition and for your continued support of PAL. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's take a

Yeah, let's imagine. They do all the hard work. Thank you very much. Please feel free to hoist the proclamation.

Thank you. Okay, thank you. We have reached the final ceremonial of the evening. This one is for Christina Horusburgger, our assistant city manager. Christina will be retiring. This is her last meeting with us here and uh she will be sorely missed. I have a resolution that I will read commending assistant city manager Christina Horrisburgger for her years of service. Whereas the Sonteo City Council desires to commemorate and honor the career and accomplishments of its assistant city manager Christina Horusberger. And whereas Christina has dedicated more than two decades to municipal government service throughout the Bay Area. building a distinguished career grounded in collaborative leadership, strategic planning, and public service excellence. And whereas Christina joined the city of Sonteo in 2019 and nearly after nearly seven years of service, held several key leadership roles, including director of community development and interim leadership assignments within the city manager's office before being appointed assistant city manager in 2023. And whereas as assistant city manager,

Christina provided strategic oversight for major cross-dep departmental initiatives involving communications, economic development, sustainability, organizational capacity, and community engagement, helping advance the city's mission to deliver highquality services to the Sanonteo community. And whereas throughout her tenure, Christina brought steady leadership, thoughtful insight, and extensive experience to some of the city's most complex and important initiatives, including land use and housing strategy, service delivery improvements, and organizational development efforts. And whereas Christina's leadership helped move the organization toward a more collaborative, courageous, and inclusive workplace where employees felt supported, empowered, and valued for their unique strengths and contributions. And whereas Christina has been widely respected as a trusted adviser, mentor, and dedicated public servant whose commitment to the city of Sonteo has had a meaningful and lasting impact on both the organization and the broader community. And whereas after almost 7 years of dedicated service to the city of Sanonteo, Christina will conclude her service to the city this spring, leaving behind a legacy of professionalism, mentorship, and compassionate leadership that will continue to shape the organization for years to come. Now therefore, be it resolved that the city of council of Sonteo hereby unanimously expresses on behalf of the Sonteo community its deepest appreciation and gratitude to Assistant City Manager Christina Horesburgger for her dedicated and distinguished public service and extends its very best wishes

for happiness and fulfillment in her retirement and future endeavors. Thank you. Now, let's see. I will now invite Christina to share a few words if she's so inclined.

Thank you, Mayor Lorraine and council members. Um I am so inclined. Um, I just um I I want to say thank you um to you all, to um the councils before you and to my staff um that I've worked with, to the city manager and the preceding city manager and um the community that I've worked with here in San Mateo. for the experience that I have had here. It has been um enriching and a privilege and an honor to work with everybody here. Um I think all of the projects have been interesting and enriching and um not without their challenges, that's for sure. Um, but I don't think I've worked with a more engaged um, educated and um, interested community. And I don't think that I've had a better team anywhere that I have worked with. And that is in every department that I've worked with here. And because of the roles that I've had, um, it's been every single department. You know, I was in community development when I started. I moved to the city manager's office and um for a short time I was interim city manager, which means that um I was able to see up close and personal the work of every department in this city and to touch in some way all of the aspects of the community members here. And um like I said, it's been my honor and my privilege and I have appreciated every moment of it. So I appreciate that that

I have had this experience and and I thank you all for for letting me.

Thank you. And if you'll join us at the center, we'd like to take a photo with you. How's this going to work? There we are. Just before we move on, um I do want to note that we do have some folks standing in the back. Um we do have some available seats. If you're seated um to the side, if you wouldn't mind please scooching in a little bit and make some space for folks to come. Um we we do have some available seats at the front. If you could please um scooch in a little bit, we'll help uh make sure we get everyone a seat tonight. Thank you. Okay, thanks everyone for being with us for these celebrations. We are now moving beyond the ceremonial portion of tonight's meeting which includes the business items being considered by the council. For that reason, I would just like to remind all in the room and online that we will be enforcing the rules of decorum. As such, we do not allow at this time forward for cheering, jeering, or booing during the business portion of the

meeting as this tends to put a chill on public comment. Our goal is to ensure that all perspectives are heard. Our motto is give respect, get respect, and we appreciate your cooperation with this. City clerk, can you please read our consent calendar?

Certainly, Mayor Lorraine. All matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the council to be routine and will be enacted by one motion without discussion. If discussion is desired, that item may be removed and considered separately. Item number five, 2026 25 community development block grant annual action plan adoption. Item number six, wastewater treatment plant immediate actions projects package three, appropriation and contingency increase. Item number seven, on call public works plan review services amendments. Item number eight, Marina Lagoon spot dredging agreement. Item number nine, 57 OT Avenue slide repair project agreement. Item number 10, quarter ending March 31st, 2026 investment report. Item number 11, fellow one and two new classification series job specification and salary schedules approval. Item number 12, recreation program transportation services agreement. Item number 13, Peninsula Clean Energy name change to Westlite energy ordinance adoption. And finally, item number 14, historic policy update ordinance adoption.

Thank you, city clerk. Is there any member of the council who would like to pull an item from the consent calendar? um through the mayor. I do not want to pull an item, but I would like to comment on items five and items eight, and I'm happy to wait until the end.

Okay. Thank you. Five and eight. Uh we can wait until after the consent calendar may be passed. Uh thank you. If any are there any members of the public, if there are any members of the public who would wish to comment on any consent calendar item, now would be the time to please make your comment. This is for the consent calendar items only. Again, if you're in chambers and you haven't had an opportunity yet, you can bring a request to speak slip to the city clerk. If you are online, this would be the time to raise your hand in the Zoom webinar. Mr. Mayor, while we are taking the last of public comment, I would appreciate the opportunity to comment on number 14.

Very well. Number 14. And city clerk, please just let us know once you feel you have tabulated our number of comments. Mayor Lorraine, we have received a total uh of 17 requests to speak on uh consent calendar items. Um per adopted uh rules and procedures, that would set the time at 2 minutes per speaker. So, we will begin with our speakers in chambers first. If you're joining us in chambers and I call your name, if you could please line up to my right, uh that'll help us make sure we receive all of your comments expeditiously. Um so we will begin with our first three speakers in chambers, which will be Richard Delaney, followed by excuse me, Richard Delaney, followed by Sorry, bear with me one moment. Apologies. Uh we will have lit so followed by Doug Deanna.

Do we have anyone online? Yes we do.

And our final speaker in our virtual environment will be uh Melanie Feru. Good evening. I object to the city council approving the historic preservation ordinance as written. There are still problems that are unresolved and there are issues. I'm sure you will hear more about them. I'm not going to go through all of them, but I do have one that I think is new. There's another and that's loss of value. I'm a commercial real estate broker. I have no business in San Monteo County, but the economic facts are the same here, there, or the other place. Real properties have two values. One is the economic value, and the other is the potential economic value. Many of the properties being declared historic have potential economic value in excess of their current value. One of the major causes of this discrepancy is Major T. There are other issues. The owners of this property would suffer an economic loss if their property were declared historic without their consent. A current example, and it's fairly well known, is the Marilyn Monroe house down in LA. There is a court case existing now, Marilyn Monroe homeowners versus the city of Los Angeles. And the fact was that the city declared her house historic without asking the owner and ultimately the owner decided that he lost a lot of economic value and lost a lot of money. That's what the lawsuit is about. I urge the council to reject the

ordinance as written, take no further action until the Baywood nomination is pulled and start over with real incentives, proper public notice, owner consent, and an ordinance that we can all live with. There's no hurry to get this done. Let's do it right the first time.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Lit Schollet, followed by Doug Deanna and Chris Eggert. Thank you for letting me speak today, Mayor Lorraine and city council. I'm a homeowner here in San Monteo. I do have two properties, one on Fifth Avenue and one in the village. Um, and the Fifth Avenue property could easily be considered historic because it was a customuilt in the 20s. And unfortunately, it is not a house that is conducive to today's living environments. um that the house uh needs to be remodeled and it needs to have itself updated to meet the living standards that someone would expect. My concern is that if an ordinance is adopted to change how houses are designated as historic, that leaves homeowners in a bind. How do they handle the cost of dealing with historic houses that they may not have expected when they first brought the properties? Also, how are they going to get the insuranceances that will be required and the cost of that insurance? We already live in a very high cost area. Adding additional burdens because of an age of a house does not necessarily make it historic. And not notifying a homeowner before doing a survey is going to cause a lot of hardship to either existing homeowners or homeowners that decide they can't afford to own a house that's considered historic. And then finding a buyer. Going back to the first speaker, that is going to be a difficult sale, especially in an area that is already very hard to buy in. So, I just want to make sure that the that the council

understands the effect that it's going to have on homeowners and how important are these designations being being considered by the city council and the effect it's going to have in the environment.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Doug Deanna followed by Chris Eert and Joe Valpone. Mayor and Council, um, I'm Doug Deanna. You know me as Mr. Glazenwood. I want to take this opportunity to thank you again for your unanimous support of reaffirming our district as one of the only residential historic districts in Sonteo, which will be available for people from generations will be able to walk down our streets and see what old Sanonteo looked like. Three days ago, a Los Angeles law firm submitted amendments to tonight's ordinance and called them straightforward and simple fixes. And if their amendments don't lock down Glazenwood's historic status, what exactly are they fixing? Because the only thing that's straightforward that comes at the end of their letter is an explicit reservation of rights and a forthcoming objections letter. That's why I wrote the city attorney and asked three specific legal questions about how their language affects Glazenwood's designation, its demolition protections, and the city's own environmental findings and why I'm here tonight to find out if those questions have been answered positively in writing. If they haven't, the fix is simple and straightforward. Reject the amendments and pass the ordinance as written. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Chris Eckert, followed by Joe Valpone, and then we will have an organized presentation led by Frank Elliot.

Mayor Lorraine, council, my name is Chris Eckert, and I'm a resident of Glazenwood. On April 20th, this council voted 5 to zero to designate Glazenwood as a historic district. That vote was the result of months of work and 83% homeowner consent. The proposed amendments raise a direct question. Does the new language in the historic def resource definition conflict with section 27.66.030, which explicitly protects historic districts designated by the resolution before this ordinance takes effect, including Glazenwood's April 20th designation. Before this council acts on any amendment tonight, I would ask, has the city attorney confirmed that answer in writing? Please protect what you've already voted for. Adopt the ordinance as written tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Joe Valpony, followed by Frank Elliott and Elellanar Dogen. Thank uh thank you. Um this the entire historic designation issue has already cost the city a considerable amount of money in terms of time, energy, resources. And this is all taxpayer dollars and it comes with a city that's at a with a budget deficit. And for what? You know, to if Glazenwood has the majority of their people that are in favor of this, fine. That's great for Glazenwood. to a blanket thing across the whole city to appease a small group that thinks they have the right to trample over the property rights of individual owners that have purchased these properties. The overwhelming majority of people in Sonteo aren't in favor of this and they strenuously oppose it. Yet, it continues to push forward more costs. You know, after trying to establish Baywood as a historic district, only to find out that the

majority of the residents there wouldn't consent to it, this group has now targeted 124 individual properties scattered throughout Sonteo. And those people, nobody even bothered to inform them, didn't certainly didn't give them a choice. um none of them ask for that designation and none of them are getting any benefit from it. Yet, you know, it's just being foed on them. So, before the c the uh council spends more money with a budget deficit on this program to update surveys and the like, I appreciate it if we would just stop the madness and allow individual homeowners to opt in or opt out on their properties. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now move to our organized presentation which will be Frank Elliott speaking on behalf of a number of residents. We'll set the timer at 5 minutes. Yeah. Okay.

Good evening. Uh I had a formal slide presentation prepared tonight, but after talking to a few council members, I've pivoted and so I'm changing and doing this a little on the fly. Um, I'm going to use one or one or three two or my slides and that's it. And I have five main points to make tonight. First of all, I want to address why we are here. There was a working assumption that Heritage Alliance would drop their nomination with the state if we engage in this local process. That was the understanding. That was the deal. A half a million dollars later, it did not happen. Broken promise number one. Number two, until a few months ago, I was told by council member Lisa Diaz Nash, don't worry about the nomination, you can influence the restrictions when we get through the ordinance update. Turns out that was false. This ordinance has nothing to do with Baywood. Broken promise number two. Now, Lisa, I think you might have believed that at the time, but we were misinformed. I'd ask what you think about how to correct that. Third, don't we notify people before we create laws that take away their rights? Apparently not for the 1989 properties. Ordinance changed for 124 properties with no notice to these people. These owners are stunned. They have no idea what's going on only because we went out reached out to them and told them. Fourth, I am told that the O owner should have known this because they were mentioned in a 37 year old survey because they're in a general plan. Are those 124 properties listed in the general plan? Were owners formally notified? Staff tells us they were not officially listed as historic. Is staff wrong on this issue? You're hearing from these owners by email. Many of them are here tonight. Why don't you ask them?

I've heard from John Mays and most of you say it. 124 owners should not be forced into the inventory except under rare circumstances. That is the intention. I'm fine with that. The problem is that's not what your wording says. It says something different. We need precision in the ordinance, not ambiguity. Here's what I'm asking for. Some simple things that you can do. First, pull us off the agenda. You have Glazedwood people that are object are confused about what's in there. Bring it back with language that says what you mean. You mean that you can only push people through if it's overwhelming evidence. Define that. Be explicit. Two, we've got some owners that thought they were in the inventory. Let's like the Glazingwood people. Let's fasttrack those people in just like we did for Glazingwood. Why should they be discriminated against? And three, demand demand transparency from the Heritage Alliance. Demand opening open meetings. Demands demand transparency. Demand disclosure of what their future targets are. Why are you tolerating the secrecy? In conclusion, you think we're complaining. The Baywood people have gotten nothing at all out of this process. Yes, we got consent language, but that does absolutely nothing for Baywood. It'll help some other people that may be try to be designated locally except apparently the 128 people 124. This this preservation climate is poisoned not because of what I did because of one rogue organization. We want to work together and find common ground. They do not. They want to force this on us. And I'll offer one other thing. If anybody wants to volunteer to be historic, particularly these preservations, Lisa Nash, Mike Nash, Lori Heater, Lisa Viv, Tom Lee, I'll pay to have the studies done so you can wave

them in to be historic. Lead us by example. Show us how much you like this. Council, please continue this item. You can fix this. It's not hard. There's just a few simple things you have to do. I just listed them. Fix the language. demand transparency on a regular basis from Heritage Alliance and help this community heal. We are divided. You should see that in the audience right now. This is not right and you're pushing this through without hearing the public. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next individual speaker will be Elanor Dogen followed by Andrew Ryan and Lorie Heater. Thank you, council, for your sacrifices and devotion to the city and for representing those who can't be at city council meetings because they have jobs, kids, or health issues. They really depend on you to defend them, Marian. Thank you, Marian and Allan could not be here tonight. Both in their 90s, Marian and Allan have lived in their Sanonteo home for 45 years. They have lovingly maintained it over those decades and they regularly check their mail and yet they had no idea that a survey was being conducted 36 years ago. Um and that a survey could put their house on a list that made it historic. They definitely would have objected to being surveyed. Council agreed in January that express owner consent should be a prerequisite before owners and their properties are forced into a historic designation which carries significant costs and restrictions. Please do not survey or list properties against owner consent where the very act of doing so creates historic restrictions. Put that budget to better use. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Andrew Ryan, followed by Lorie Heater and Lisa Van Devour.

No consent, no historic. Consent is what less red tape has been fighting for. Consent is what the voters want and consent is what council agreed to. Consent is the only way to avoid neighborhood strife like we have in Baywood. And now the council is poised to declare 124 homes historic without owner consent. If you go ahead with this, you're going to have a lot of angry residents. Council, please don't write these homes into the ordinance. What's the rush? No one's coming to destroy these homes. They don't need saving. If you want to preserve these homes, take your time. Work with the owners. Get consent. give them financial incentives and work the costs into the overall city budget. And speaking of budget, the city is lying to us about the financial impact of historic. Look in your agenda. Page two of tonight's agenda clearly states no budget impact for historic. Surely you cannot be serious. Serving 124 homes, a brand new seven member commission, new regulations, and somehow this costs nothing. That's impossible. We're in a $17 million budget deficit and you're spending money that you don't have on things that people don't want. Police, fire, sewer, parks, safe streets, libraries. That's what people want, not historic. And I'll be voting no on any tax increases you put in front of me in the next foreseeable future. That's for sure. No consent, no historic.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Lori Heater, followed by Lisa Van Devour and Ashley Zerba.

Good evening, Mayor Lorraine and council members. Uh thank you for uh the work you've done to fill out our historic ordinance. I was going to talk tonight about some of the um missing parts of the ordinance and how one of the big uh concerns I have is that the new ordinance takes away the council review of demolition. It weakens the protections for historic and my opinion is that the historic ordinance is less strong than the previous ordinance because of a number of these factors that staff included in the ordinance. And I'm also have to say that I'm disappointed that so few people have really read the ordinance. I know it's complicated. I know it's difficult, but it is only 10 pages. And if you read the ordinance, I think you will see that um if Baywood was identified as an historic district, uh there would be no change in anybody's operation of their home, of how the city addresses changes to um the homes. And I hope that you will um approve this ordinance so we can stop the madness. As they say, this should be a living document and I hope that there will continue to be improvements. Um and I just want to close by saying that historic preservation is not something I made up. It's not new. It's a shared value at the city level. It's been in our general plan since the Historic Preservation Act was passed in 1970 or and you know this is a shared value nationally and internationally. So what we're doing here isn't different from what anyone else does. It doesn't take away your property rights. All this does is try and keep the harmony of the neighborhood. It's the same thing that's in the single family guidelines. So, I

urge you to uh please keep this on consent and let's move forward. Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Lisa Vandervort, followed by Ashley Zerpa and Betsy Bloss.

Good evening, city council. I'd like to speak to the topic of owner consent and see if we can stop this fearongering once and for all. There has been repeated messaging suggesting that property owners would have no voice under this ordinance. That is simply not correct. For properties identified in the 1989 historic survey, owners are not automatically locked into a permanent designation. If a property is considered for the historic resources inventory, there will be a public hearing. owners will be heard and the ordinance provides a formal process for removal or delisting. Homeowners can indeed opt out. So, while some are demanding absolute owner consent in every circumstance, this ordinance already contains significant compromise and multiple opportunities for owner participation. Historic preservation is not solely a private matter. Historic resources are community assets that contribute to the identity and character of Sonteo and the ones that are identified in the 1989 survey are some of the most critical in terms of their historic significance. Compromise means neither side gets everything it wants and this ordinance already leans heavily towards property owner protections. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Our next two speakers will be Ashley Zerpa followed by Potsy Placet.

Hi council. Um, so today I want to talk to you. I am a North Central resident and today I want to talk to you about why I think you know we need to just push this preservation ordinance through. Like they're complaining already that it's taken too much time, it's taken too much money. These are just question. These are just words they keep saying. Everyone's saying the same exact thing. It's more like a sheep her mentality. They're they're saying what they're told to say. So, I'm here to tell you to realize that maybe these people haven't even read the ordinance because there is a choice. Owner owners do get consent and it is in the ordinance if they read that and they will know that even though their house may be listed on the historical resources inventory, the owner has the option of going to a public hearing and voicing their concerns and they also have the opportunity to remove their property from this uh heritage resource inventory and they do that by following the delisting procedures in the ordinance. So, the fact that they say owner consent is not met, I guess they haven't read the document. So, thank you for your time.

Thank you. And our final speaker in chambers will be Betsy. Is Betsy, are you with us? Good evening. My name is Betsy Blosser and I have been a member of the Unitarian Universalist of San Mateo for more than 35 years. I am here representing myself as a member. I am on the board of that organization, but I am not representing that board. I am here to oppose the designation of a building as a historical resource without the consent of the building's owner. The restrictions that come with that designation may have the effect of limiting the use of that building and or the alteration of the building to facilitate that use. Building owners require a voice in this designation process. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now move to our virtual environment where our first speaker will be John Pharaoh. John, please unmute your mic.

Thank you very much. Um I too am a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church uh on Sanz. Uh our building was uh included in the 1989 survey without any notice or content or consent by us. And under the proposed ordinance, it could be listed without consent. We understand that we would get notice and there would be a public hearing at which we would have the opportunity to hire an architectural historian if we declined one and afford to pay them to contest the listing or we might be able to delist it using the same process. But this is going to impose a significant burden on us and it's unfair that only the buildings on this survey uh are exempted from the owner consent uh provisions. There's no particular reason u to force this process on us. uh without there being some urgent need for it. Uh if in fact there's a discretionary permit required for one of the buildings on the list, you have SQA. You can deal with u issues of historic preservation through SQA. But when we come in and ask to change out a window, um we already go through a lot of rigor. We've just spent $2 million remodeling the interior of the church and we have been very careful to preserve its historic qualities. We don't need to have the city tell us how to do our remodeling. And I think that if we if you impose this on us, you're just imposing bureaucracy and additional cost. We're a church. We can't afford it. Uh we ask that you remove section 27660 A5, which is the provision that will allow designation without owner consent. All the rest of the buildings, all the rest of the process.

Oh, we should tell Rachel. for consent. Thank you very much. Thank you. We now move on to our next speaker which will be Tracy V20. Tracy, please unmute your mic. Go ahead, Tracy. Tracy, I'm seeing your mic is unmuted. Please go ahead and give your public comment. Tracy, we're unable to hear you. So, unfortunately, we're going to move on. Oh, yes, Tracy, we can hear you. Great. Um, can you hear me for sure? Yes, we can. Okay.

Several of us spoke with some of the homeowners on the 1989 survey list who are slated to become historic without consent. Not one of them I spoke with knew anything about this. Upon learning their property was being focused on in this fashion, the emotions we encountered ranged from shock, outrage, panic, and disbelief. They could not understand how the city could do this to them without their knowledge or consent. Many questioned if this was even legal. Some sent letters to the council, too, which I'm sure you received. There is no goodwill to be gained if the city council attempts to dictate historic without consent on these unsuspecting homeowners. I urge the council not to approve this ordinance unless consent for each of these individual homeowners is added or remove it from tonight's consent agenda until these affected homeowners have a meaningful opportunity to be heard. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next speaker, Dbor. Dbor, please unmute your mic.

Hi, this is Deborah Athens and I live in Glazenwood and I'm reacting to the objections to the historic district ordinances and the recent involvement from the Los Angeles law firm. The firm that submitted these proposed amendments is Brownstein Hyatt Farber Shrek. It's a national law firm with offices in Washington DC, Denver, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. They lobby Congress. They represent developers on major infrastructure projects. Their own recent letter to the city closes with a reservation of rights and a notice of a forthcoming objections letter. So, I ask this council one question. Why would a law firm of that scale submit lastm minute amendments to a San Mateo historic preservation ordinance just three days before a consent calendar vote while simultaneously preserving their litigation rights. So I ask please adopt the ordinance as written do not amend it tonight without a city attorney opinion. Before the council considers any changes to this ordinance. We ask that the city council review those proposed changes in writing and confirm that they do not undermine what this council has already voted for in a five to zero vote. Thank you.

Thank you. And our final speaker will be Melanie. Melanie, please unmute your mic. Good evening, Mayor Lane and council members. My name is Melanie for community impact manager at Upwards. I'm actually speaking on item five, the CDBG annual action plan, and on behalf of the boost team. Sorry. Oh, no. Please continue.

Oh, sorry. Um, I just really just wasn't planning on speaking, but I did want to express our gratitude for your continued support for championing San Matteo's inhome childcare providers. Um, Boost supports low to moderate income family childcare providers in strengthening and growing their business. This is through personalized coaching and hands-on operational support. We help providers increase enrollment, stabilize revenue, create local teaching assistant jobs, and expand access to affordable, high-quality care. I also just want to add that any family in Sonteo um can access uh dedicated care specialist who can help find them uh care that suits their unique needs, including emergency backup care in less than 24 hours. And if you can hopefully not hear my little ones in the background as a working mom with two toddlers, that's something I know that's like really a gamecher. So, um, I'm always happy, uh, to answer any questions year round, both as a Upwards representative, but also a parent who will always be grateful for the providers who cared for my little ones. Thank you so much. Have a good evening.

Thank you, Mayor Lorraine. That concludes public comment on the consent calendar. Thank you very much. I will close public comment on the consent calendar items. I'll just look to staff and see if they would like to comment on anything we've heard.

Sure. So, seeing as the historic policy ordinances were not removed from consent, the council is free to simply take action on the entire consent calendar if it wishes. You could also ask me to to weigh in on some of the comments that you've heard this evening if you like, but you don't have to. So, I'll I'll ask the question to the mayor if you would like me to uh weigh in on some of the comments we've heard. Yes. Yes, I think for the public benefit I I would appreciate it.

Sure. So, I'll just I won't go into every detail, but I'll say you have options at this point. I mean, um one option is of course to adopt the historic ordinances as written. I will say that just procedurally if you wanted to make a change to the ordinance you could but then that would require reintroduction of the ordinance and just depending on the scale of the changes that could uh require doing so at a future notice public hearing. Um so that that's just something to keep in mind. Another component of all this is that what's in front of you now is the outcome of a pretty robust discussion at the last council meeting uh where the staff implemented exactly what council directed. So that's what's in front of you and that's why uh it's on the consent calendar since because there have been no deviations what the council directed. I'll just make another another couple of quick notes here. One is that if you look at the existing historic ordinance and what's being proposed, uh I would think of it in a couple of different ways. One is that it the proposed ordinance carries forward language that addresses what review is required for uh individually eligible historic resources. It also addresses demolition with some refinements. It's not exactly the same, but it's largely the same with no significant expans expansion or narrowing of what's protected. And the idea there is to uh protect resources from alteration or demolition. You even those that have not necessarily been uh designated as a historic resource by the council. Um but it's a little broader than that. So that's kind of one I'll say pillar of the current ordinance in front of you. That's a carryover from the existing ordinance. The other piece of the new ordinance is the proposed ordinance is the idea of owner consent

for uh to designate properties as being part of the inventory either an individual structure or a more elaborate process for designating a historic district which I won't go into the details of that now but you know that that's with with expanded definitions and other uh elements that were discussed in great detail at the last council meeting. So, that's how I would summarize uh the proposed ordinance. It also includes at council's direction, the the exception to the owner consent process for properties uh that are on the 1989 survey, which by the way is not an inventory. Was it was not adopted as an inventory. It was a survey. And it creates a process where the council could after owner notification following a public process to add those to the to the inventory. It this ordinance doesn't in and of itself add those properties to the inventory. And with respect to the 1989 survey, the council directed, not as part of the ordinance, as part of the motion to update the survey. And so that action hasn't occurred yet. uh that would first require action by the council to approve an ordinance. It also then would require implementation and then actually updating the survey and then the council would have to vote later on the outcome of that implementation whether any one of those properties should be added uh to the local inventory. I think I'll stop there uh instead of going into more detail, but you know, bottom line is the council, you could just uh make a motion to adopt the entire consent calendar, including the proposed historic ordinances. Um but if you have any more questions, you could direct them to me, but I see the city manager wants to weigh in. So, just real quickly on the 1989 survey and the direction that council gave us is uh before we even embark on this

initiative, I'll be bringing back a contract along with the scope of services that this council will have to make a decision on whether or not they want to move forward with that and that would probably happen later on this fall. So, there is no updates happening to the survey at this current moment. We'll be bringing back a contract per your guys' direction at the last meeting with the scope of services and get your guys' approval. If you guys approve to move forward, then we move forward on that initiative and then it goes into exactly what the city attorney has stated as the overall process. So, there's been no activity or action on updating the 1989 survey um at this point in time.

Thank you both for that uh input. And uh Deputy Mayor Fernandez, if you'd like to make a comment.

Not at this time. Okay. Uh, in that case, I will look to see if anyone else has any comments. Right. Um, and I would entertain a motion to pass the consent calendar. So moved. I would entertain a second. All right. Um I'm I'm just We're in the middle of a motion. I was going to say something, but I can't say it now, can I? Fair of not. Okay. Um second Yeah, we have a motion in a second. City clerk.

Council member Nuome, yes. Deputy Mayor Fernandez, yes. Council member Diaz Nash, yes. Council member Spirro Gaditski, yes. Mayor Lorraine, yes. Motion carries 5-0. Uh, I understand council member Spiko Gadiski has some comments she'd like to make about some items.

Yes. Um, back to item number five. as a member of the public um mentioned um this year's CBD G plan spreads nearly $900,000 across core community priorities like infrastructure upgrades, nonprofits, social services, fair housing, micro business assistance, and home repair. And I wanted to call out that more than 460,000 of that is actually going towards street, sidewalk, and pedestrian improvements in Northshore View and North Central neighborhoods. And I know people have a lot of questions about transportation and safety upgrades. So again, that's 460,000 plus going towards two equity priority communities. I'll just let everybody clear out for a second. I have one more item I'd like to comment on. Um the second item is item number eight, which is the Marina Lagoon spot dredging amendment. Um, I was very happy to see that the council approved this. Um, the Marina Lagoon has not been dredged since 1980 and there have been several residents, there's even one here tonight, um, Rick Sakuda, who have been advocating for dredging for over 30 years. Um, this project means a great deal to a lot of community members. Um it will be um the dredging of Burell Creek at 19th Avenue and the dredging of Lesley Creek at 16th Avenue. So this impacts everyone in the city. It's a major safety improvement. And I just want to say thank you to the last council and this council for all your support um and for really advocating. And I want to say thank you to all the residents from Laguna Vista, the village, um Baywood, Shore View, um everybody who advocated um for the flood-free Sanonteo initiative and for

the storm water project. Um it took us four years and this is a huge step forward um for everyone in the community towards safety. So, thank you.

Thank you. And I think I will just try to make a brief comment. um about item 14, which is to say that I appreciate everyone who came and gave public comment on it tonight. Um I I I certainly heard you and um I guess I'll just throw out uh a belief that the idea behind introducing a mechanism by which the council could designate something historic was in my mind included out of an understanding that there may be historic properties within our city. Uh that nearly everyone in our city could agree has some historic significance. But as has been discussed by staff, uh nothing is being designated tonight. And I would certainly hope that uh the first considerations would not happen until after we update the survey. And then following that, begin looking for those properties who have property owners who are interested in being included in the historic resource inventory first to obtain designations by consent. uh and to offer assistance through the mechanism to those property owners uh through potentially offering incentives that can be explored through the historic resources commission that we

are uh going to be adding. And to me, I just am am of the of the hope and belief that that is the direction we would take following next steps. Yes. Uh Deputy Mayor,

um I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. Um, I am the council member for district 2 and so I have the most uh property uh properties in my district that are on the 1989 survey. I want to thank everybody for reaching out to me about this topic. And if you'll remember at the last meeting, I was the one who said that I was not supportive of including any properties that did not include direct owner consent. Um, I unfortunately didn't have the votes on that. But that said, I do have faith in our community and I do have our faith in our city staff and the processes that we're working on to move forward on this. Um, we are going to have at least two more, I believe, public meetings on this topic. Is that right, city manager Kajikian?

At minimum.

At minimum. Um, we've developed a strong partnership with Ringcon, our consultant, on this. And at this time, I feel like the best thing that I can do, although I do truly believe that owner consent is paramount um is allow the process to play out um as we move forward. And and um I I just want to make sure that I I'm hearing the folks who are here. um against the big sort of lump sum of adding all of these properties to uh to a to a historic register. I'm I'm hearing you. Um please know you'll continue to have an ally in me, but I really do want to see what this process will yield um before we take any major measures against the direction we're flowing right now. Thanks.

Okay, thank you for that. And with that, we will move on to general public comment. Uh, so this is this is an opportunity for public comment on any items that are not on the agenda tonight. Members of the public wishing to comment on any item not appearing on the agenda may address the city council at this time. State law prevents council from taking action on any matter that's not on the agenda. Your comments may be referred to staff for followup. This public comment section is generally limited to a total of 15 minutes. However, that is subject to council's discretion and can be extended if council wishes to do so. If needed, an opportunity for additional public comment may also be provided later in the agenda. City clerk, uh, can you please tally the total number of requests to speak on general public comment? Mayor Lorraine, I've received a total of three individual requests to speak and I've one organized presentation in our virtual environment. I've not seen any hands raised. If you wish to speak on general public comment, please raise your hand now. We'll give you just a few moments to do so. After which we will be announcing the name of our final speaker. We'll be not receiving any additional requests to speak after that time. Mayor Lorraine, that caps the uh individual speakers at three. Our final speaker for individual speakers and council chambers will be Michael Reagan. And we'll begin with an organized presentation from Vicos Bagwan on behalf of a number of residents. Good evening, Mayor Lorraine, Deputy Mayor Fernandez, Ammeritus, Mayor Nash and Nuome, and Council Member Sorco Gadiski. Our presentation tonight will be to offer a viable solution for the residents of district number two who are

suffering from the lifestyle changes on Humble Street. Please don't cringe, but smile because we're offering a solution, a viable solution to an equity priority community. I will start with the problems and then provide a solution. Next slide, please. Okay, as you know, parking is a problem, but there's more. Once I once you put your walking shoes on and go walk on Humble Street, you will see that there are a lot of problems there. Number one, pedestrian safety. Next, fire safety. Why? I lost a family member in the Palisades fire. This is a concern, big concern for me. I was also born in district number two. So, this is very near and dear to me. Poor drainage, which can lead to mild flooding, which can also lead to road erosion. Next slide, please. As you can see here, these are slides just showing me with my trusty camera on my phone. 6 to 12 in of elevation up and down Humbled Street. Next slide, please. Same thing. This can be elevated from tree roots up to 18 in. This is a problem for pedestrian safety. A major problem. Next slide, please. When it comes to fire safety, we see power lines running through branch tree branches. fire fire zone statistics do not apply here. Why? Because the embers from these when they burn will land on the shake roofs and that is why we actually discontinued fireworks in San Monteo. Next slide. As you can see the same thing. Power lines running into the tree branches. Next slide please. Poor drainage. If you notice accumulated water, this is one week after the rain. The water has not drained nor has it evaporated. Why? Because the gutters are not pitched correctly. It's a legacy gutters and they were not done correctly to begin with. They need to be pitched into the storm drains and storm drains are only at the ends of the blocks. They're not in the middle like Norfolk Street. Next slide, please. Same thing.

Accumulated accumulated into the driveways of of of community members and residents. Next slide, please. So, I would like to offer a very common sense solution, which is remove the planter strips, which are non-functional, although people would say they are functional. Next slide, please. As you can see on Norfolk Street, we get six feet of bike lanes. We get six feet of parking and we have nice flow of traffic. This is on Norfol and Noi. This is only 46 ft wide. When Trina and I go measure the width of of Humbult, we find that it's 42 feet, but each planter is only 2 1/2 ft. So if you remove them on both sides, you have 47 feet. Guess what? You have an extra foot to spare to possibly make the bike lanes wider. Next slide, please. So our rationale are this is a win-win solution for safety and social well-being pedestrians, residents, and cyclists. So we ask as a community from an equity priority community to pivot away from a one-way $10 million option, which would also be in the opposite direction to a street widening project. The widening street is more cost-effective. What we need is feasibility feasibility study with community oversight. Next slide, please. benefit the benefits of street widening resource parking for your social well-being. Can you imagine if your family can't visit you? I've been there. It took me a half an hour to find parking when we went for a measurement. Can you imagine if you can't celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, playdates with kids right now, they can't do that. It's very tough. Okay. Pedestrian safety I just talked about and cyclists will get safety with wider bike lanes. Next slide, please. Some added benefits, fire safety from the tree branches, proper drainage. Now you don't have to worry about road erosion, longevity of your streets, and it eliminates a fire a financial burden for an equity priority community. Next slide, please. And the cost, we really don't know what the cost is. If I came to you came here to you with a budget, the city would come up

with their own and they would be quite different. So what we are asking for is a feasibility study. A call from JU said that they can range from 1.4 4 to two to $1.7 million. Well, that's a far cry from uh uh a 10 million or $20 million project. So, I would ask that we look into grants and other mechanisms of getting this done. Next slide, please. That's it. And what I would like to finally leave you with is this. It was once said about innovation in government. Anyone who comes into your office with an idea and it may be the silliest idea in the world, listen to them and never ridicule them. This was from Democratic Congressman Thomas P. O'Neal. Tip O'Neal.

Thank you. Thank you. We will now move to our individual request to speak where our first speaker will be Lee. May please come up to the podium and they'll be followed by Rick Sakuda and Michael Reagan.

Thank you. Uh this is May, last name is Lee. Um I'm a resident homeowner uh in Satel for over 26 years with my husband. We live in Lauale. Um so today I previously shared something kind of a little bizarre. I detected a high radio frequency after my longtime neighbor share her symptoms with me. And also we have seven street lights that cover with this deflectors uh right in front of our buildings. Um so I add up all these with my other experiences both medical and the um other bizarre experience. So basically um I got a mysterious eye laser like retina burns in the end of 2022. And uh I also got a mysterious head uh indentation and also the tiny uh uh bumps and then I captured uh both on my head and also on my skin. Uh this was back in 2024 and after a long time over 15 years of suspic suspicious of my husband back get a lot of bumps and uh I believe what we've been attacked a lot of people probably got the same experience based on my recurring record uh symptoms is we've been get some something called a directive energy weapon and that's why they burn the trees because it's causing thermal effects. And with the nano sensors we carry not knowing it. So basically it generate this thermal effects causing this sensors that moving inside us and the signals can be retrieved through visible

light data communications as I mentioned before and also something called a solar management and uh so basically I don't know if you can get a closer look of this page and And there is a retired affairman called Jesse Beltran and also a induced mental illness case long time her name is Bonnie Kylerby and there are other expert been sharing their knowledge online and uh I hope we all can do some homework and I will share more physical symptoms next time. So my goal is trying to get general public a proper diagnosis for nano sensors which is very small and also just so you know this is someone put in our home not belong to us this happened last year and uh I will come back next time.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next two speakers will be Rick Sakura and our final speaker will be Michael Reagan. Well, here we go again. This is dragged on for well over three and a half years. So, let's look at what we already know. The decision to implement this bike lane by the prior administration was shortsighted, rushed, and ignored the resident community. Quoting Mayor Al Lee in public statements, she said, "We made a mistake and did not consider the tradeoffs. If we had to do it over again, it would have a different result. We know the bike lane is sparsely used. Maybe that's not mentioned, but we all know it. We've been down there and there's no traffic there. In the past three and a half years, as I go by Humble, I have yet to see a bike in the southbound bike lane. And what's undeniable is that in the dead of night and off peak hours during the rain, storms, and inclement weather, no one is using that bike lane. and the residents are denied parking 24/7. It's very difficult to drive down Humboldt and see the empty parking spaces and no bicycles using it. It's been three and a half years. If they were going to come, they would have already been there by now. There's been no balancing of the tradeoff for the detriment caused to the North Central community. the numbers don't work and the impact on the community is unwarranted. We know there is a huge disparity in power, privilege, influence, and resources between the opposing sides on this issue. The probicycle faction are wellunded, privileged professionals with guidance and support from a large far-reaching out of town coalition. On the other side are the residents. You know them. They are an equity priority community. S Sam Sonteo is only one. There are people of color, low income,

limited English proficiency, seniors, single parent families, people with disabilities, rent burden households, and I'll add, they are immigrants and families with food and health care insecurities. These are people struggling to get by daytoday. They don't need the extra burden of trying to find parking every time they leave the house to go work two jobs. Historically, these communities have been under reppresented and easily fall prey to outsiders with more power and influence in their communities can never thrive and grow. The 215 parking spaces amount that have been taken away amount for 1,8778,000 lost parking hours per year. You compare that to the real hours that the South Bomb bike lane you utilizes, there's no reasonable tradeoff on that. I think the city owes it to the residents of North Central to find an equitable solution as was mentioned so well by Mr. Vicos. There is a plan for a one-way uh street and there's also the original plan which the residents favor of the shared bike lane or bicycle boulevard.

Thank you. Thank you.

Our final speaker and for general public comment will be Michael Reagan. Good evening. Um, first, uh, I'm here to support, uh, the North Central Neighborhood on this topic. Um, and I want to thank, um, our city manager, Alex, um, and Matt Fabri, uh, public works. They had a meeting with us last week. So, I think the issue is still relevant. I think that you realize up there that um this bike lane is uh been um kind of a um put in a miscalculation. I I don't think it works. I think that's been proven and I think you owe it to this neighborhood. As with the last group that here that was here, this neighborhood does not have the clout or the resources to um influence you um the way that they that they they would love to. Um but the harm that's been brought to this neighborhood has been particularly difficult for um anybody that looks at the at the big picture to understand that you guys up there can do something about it. It's okay to make a mistake. It's okay to admit to admit to a mistake, but to correct a mistake is harder to do. And if it's just a financial um consideration that this has not been remedied, um I think that is inexcusable. Um the um presentation today was an effort to try to remedy the issue and I think there is a remedy if this doesn't work. But I I think that you could owe it to the neighborhood to resurrect the parking in the neighborhood and give them back what they so sorely need. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Lorraine. That concludes general public comment through the mayor. Yes. Um can I just ask the city manager um a clarification question about Humboldt? Were you going to make a comment anyways? Not about Humble. I was going to talk about flipping uh the next item with bespoke since the there's a large audience here. I was going to ask to see if the council's willing to do that, but go ahead. Um so is it my understanding the next meeting is this fall on Humbult? That is correct. We're going to bring an item back to the council just basically off of the investigative work and the exploration of this one-way street option. Mhm. And so for the feasibility

Yeah. the feasibility of that. Just real quick before I say the fall, Matt Fabry, where are you? Is it the do we have a month in mind? Looking in August potentially. Oh, this summer. So in August. Um is in the next meeting there's a transportation update for the whole city. Correct. That is correct. Um will you be touching on Humbult at all at that point? It might be just part of a larger package um overall because we are literally covering everything under the umbrella of transportation uh that we're doing here. I'd say the bigger focus on Humbled will be at that August meeting. Okay. Um and I just want to remind the public that we can't take action on public comment. That is correct. Yep.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Uh thank you, Deputy Mayor Nicole Fernandez. And uh I just want to thank uh my community, North Central, for showing up and uh on this topic. I I I still support removal, but that's where I am. Um, uh, I was wondering if the city manager could tell me if there, uh, what the outcome or or assessment of the meeting that you had last week was. Can you talk about the meeting that you had with our community members? The community group. Yeah. Can you um it was just really I heard the same presentation that uh Vakos gave to the council

and I let them know that we are currently working off the direction that council gave us earlier this year. That's what we do. We take direction from this majority of council and we move forward with that and if we were to pivot it would take council action in order to pivot. Thank you on that. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. I will close general public comment and thank those who gave public comments. And now I believe we can move on. Uh except the city manager had a a proposal.

I was hoping that understanding the audience and I believe they're all here for the bespoke development project this evening, a majority of them. So I was hoping maybe we could flip the fashion island or put bespoke up next and then we can hear Fashion Island after that if the council so wishes. Any objections? Okay, I see none and I think we could go ahead with that proposal. We'll have Rachel Rachel if you want to come on up.

So, we'll move on to what was listed in the agenda as item 16, which is 445 Southb Street bespoke new mixeduse development approval and ordinance introduction. We have a presentation from Assistant City Manager Christina Horsesburgger and Rachel Horst, our housing and neighborhood services manager. Good evening, council members. I'm Rachel Horse, housing and neighborhood services manager, and I'm joined by assistant city manager Christina Horrisburgger. We're going to be giving you background on the 455 South B Street project known as Bespoke. So, um, some background here for you on the project site. As you can see, it's outlined in red here. It occupies an entire city block. It consists of um, four parcels. Um, it's bounded by East Fourth Avenue to the northwest, South Railroad Avenue, and the Cal Train Right of Way to the northeast, South B Street to the southwest, and East Fifth Avenue to the southeast. And it's also uh adjacent to Kiku Crossing, which is the uh affordable housing development on city- owned land. And it's also located within a half a mile of the uh Cal Train downtown station. Uh, it's currently developed with four commercial buildings and it also has a city-owned surface parking lot on it, which is the part outlined in yellow. The project site is 1.16 acres in size. It has a general plan land use designation of downtown retail core and a zoning designation of uh central business residential overlay. And it's

also one block south of the downtown historic district. So, here is um a broad outline of milestones to date with this project. We can go back to January 2021 when the um city council adopted a resolution declaring the city-owned site at East 4th Avenue and South Railroad um surplus lands. So, pursuant to the surplus lands act, a notice of land availability was released and then uh interested parties or developers that are registered with the state uh California Department of Housing and Community Development or HCD uh um were notified and could respond. And in October 2021, uh the developer group, which consists of Prometheus Real Estate Group, Harvest Properties, and Alta Housing, which is an affordable housing developer. Um that group was selected uh to develop the what is known as the Talbot site, the city-owned parking lot. They also proposed to acquire the adjacent parcels, which is why we see a development on the entire city block. Their ability to assemble those parcels allowed for a greater number of affordable units on the city property. this um in October 2021, the city council also directed staff to enter and the city into an exclusive negotiation agreement with that developer team. And in September October 2022, um there was public outreach, a community meeting and planning commission study session on the potential project which was then refined and um is the project that you see today. In May 2023 and September 2024, there were city council study sessions where the deal terms of this project were refined. Um this is um a complex project with um many deal terms that required significant time to hash out in September 2024 to the present. We

continue to revise those terms and then draft the legal documents that codify those. So in summary, this project has been in the works for some time going back to October 2021 to now. There have been four extensions to that ENA, the exclusive negotiation agreement. This is a multi-party negotiation with the city acting in multiple roles, including as a property owner, but also as a development partner and as a regulatory authority. And so what we see um today is a proposal for a commercial office development with an affordable housing component, mixeduse development that maximizes, as I said, the affordable housing on the site, which is 71 units of affordable housing. Um because of the unique ability of of this developer team to acquire those adjacent parcels and create this larger mixeduse development that activates the entire block. Next slide. So here we'll touch on the project agreements and asurances. As you can see from the packet, there are many agreements associated with this project. And it's important to note that in addition to the to the agreements, there there are things that are unique about this project. One of which is that it's phase construction on a shared podium. That is to say, the commercial developer will be constructing an underground parking garage on which there will be a podium and on top of that podium uh the commercial and the residential vertical structures will be built. They will not be built at exactly the same time. The affordable housing depends on the completion of the garage and their ability to assemble public financing, low-inccome tax credits among those. And so the all parties in this um project have a shared need for certainty of being able to complete the affordable housing of having a regulatory environment and other development

conditions that are conducive to completing this project. So here are some key terms. There are many more. They're outlined in broadly in in the report for this evening, but we'll call out some of them here. One of them is the ground lease for the residential development. So, the city will ground lease the city-owned parking lot to the residential developer to Alta Housing for the residential development. The city will also loan $3 million in the form of a construction loan for the affordable housing. The commercial developer, as I said, will build the parking garage and the podium on which the residential will be built. The commercial developer is also making a $2.9 million contribution to the affordable housing, and that will be used for pre-development costs. it will be deposited with the city and then the city will um disperse those funds to Alta Housing to pay for those predevelopment costs. Other project asurances, there are many uh include a $3 million deposit from the commercial developer, a $3.5 million additional deposit. These are both deposits. So these are made at different points in the project schedule to ensure that we um that we see affordable housing at the end of the project schedule. And so they returned if if the affordable housing indeed is built. If it is not, these these will be held by the city. And there is also a $100,000 per year deposit for from the commercial developer. And this is until the building permit of the garage is issued. So that's up to four years in the project schedule. So the $100,000 per year represents something like rent for the city-owned land which is currently tied up in this project. And so were the affordable housing to fall through or the project to fall through then the city would receive that money the

400,000. This is all I think made more salient if you're reviewing the schedule of performance. you can see exactly when these deposits are to be made, when they would be retained. Um, and this schedule of performance is included in the disposition and development agreement or the DDA which I will review in a moment. These are binding milestones that by a certain date a particular event has to occur such as applying for building permit or closing on financing or issuing a building permit. Um and these milestones have buffers meaning that there is additional time allowed for uh events that are outside the control of the parties. Um but then those buffer dates we call them outside dates um are the absolute final date by which that milestone has to occur. Next slide. So just to go in greater depth in into u just two two of these agreements. One is the development agreement uh that is adopted via ordinance and the development agreement is between the city and the developer team and also the owner of the property that's being leased by the commercial developer for the project. They're ground leasing that property. Uh the point of a development agreement is to provide assurance that the project can be built as it's entitled and it's subject only to the laws, policies and regulations that are in place on the effective date. Now the maximum term and the term of the development agreement is important because that's the time period during which those laws, policies and regulations remain in place is 14 and a half years. This follows the schedule of performance. There is an extension for what are called force majour events or events that are outside of the control of of the parties. So there could be additional time but um that is the the term of the DA. The other agreement that um we wanted to highlight thank you is the disposition and development agreement or the DDA. This is a very large document which has

many exhibits to it. As you'll see, broadly speaking, it contains the terms and conditions under which this developer team will build the project. It allows for this project to happen on these different parcels with different ownership. It contains the schedule of performance as I mentioned and it contains many other provisions that pertain to this somewhat complex development. It also contains in its exhibits several other key agreements like the ground lease, a reciprocal easement agreement, a lot tai agreement having to do with the um construction, the operation and maintenance of the shared parking garage, the loan agreements for the affordable housing um agreements of regarding the use of the garage and parking arrangements and so on and so forth. So that is the other um agreement called the DDA. This is a former redevelopment property and so this type of agreement applies in this case. Um, okay. I'm going to hand it over to Christina for the rest. Uh, thank you Rachel for describing in detail a lot of what has been happening behind the scenes for the past se several years. This brings us to the portion of the project where we talk a little bit more about um the things that have been happening in a more outfacing capacity. And so I'll begin with the project description. Um so we have before us tonight a sevenstory 100% affordable housing building with groundf flooror nonprofit space, a six-story office building with groundf flooror retail. We have public rightway improvements and an underground garage with 137 parking spaces. The garage would span the entire site, include 37 residential parking spaces and 100 commercial parking spaces. And a portion of those parking spaces would be shared

um amongst the commercial and residential spaces and 37 of those would be available to the public during the evening and weekend hours. Um within the residential building, we have the unit breakdown before you here. I would note that one of the units is uh manager units and the remainder would be available for lower income households. On the ground floor, I mentioned that there would be a nonprofit space. It's approximately 6,000 square ft in size and it is reserved specifically for the organization Self-Help for the Elderly, which is a local nonprofit that currently um is been situated within Central Park. Um that particular organization promotes independent living for lower income older adults um primarily from multicultural communities. The mixeduse office building is roughly 163,000 square ft of office space from the second floor on up. It is six stories in height. It wraps around the residential building and on the ground floor we have approximately 14,000 square ft of retail space. Here we have a rendering showing what the two buildings look like together. So you can see though they are both contemporary in their general nature, um they do look distinctly different from one another so that you can tell which is the residential and which is the commercial building. Um, and that was intentional to um, make sure that we didn't have just one massive building taking up the whole entire block. And here we see a different aspect of the building which highlights some of the right-of-way improvements, the landscaping features. It shows the areas where some of the tree replacements are

because there are some tree removals associated with the project and also highlights some of the open space that will be provided on the upper stories of the mixed office and retail uh building. So, as Rachel mentioned, there are several entitlements associated with this building. I won't get into every single one of them here, although they are contained within your packet. Some of the notable ones are the disposition and development agreement, the or sorry, yeah, the disposition disposition and development agreement, the development agreement and ordinance, the introduction of the ordinance is before you tonight. The second reading would come before you um at the next city council meeting and then go into effect 30 days later. We also had planning applications which went to the planning commission and I'll talk a little bit more about that at a later slide but that included a SPAR or site plan and architectural review for the new buildings, a site development planning application for the removal of the heritage trees which as I mentioned will be replaced and supplemented and a special use permit for the community serving ground floor space in an area that typically would require active retail. There's also a loading zone um exemption that is associated with the SPAR. This project also takes advantage of state density bonus law and the city must allow for this provision uh of increased residential density, reduce parking standards and incentives and waiverss or reductions from development standards for residential projects that provide certain percentage of affordable units. As this project provides 100% affordable units to low-income households, the project would be

eligible for unlimited percentage of density bonus up to four concessions and up to 33 additional feet of building height and unlimited waiverss from development standards. In this case, the allowable base density is 58 units and the project is proposing a total of 71 units for a 22% density increase. They're also proposing to use two of the four allowable concessions, specifically asking for added floor area and reduced open space. And they're asking to use six waivers, including one for height uh setback and minimum um unit size waivers, amongst a few others. So this project is also governed by several local planning documents which are listed here. So um I would point out specifically that it is subject to the 2030 general plan though general plan 20 240 is now in effect. The reason for that is because at the time that this application was submitted general plan 2030 was in effect. So the policies and um guidelines and actions in the previous general plan are the ones that would govern this particular project. We did conduct a transportation analysis in conjunction with the environmental review for this project and uh as far as vehicle miles traveled and the city's transportation guidelines, they were observed and we found that there were no impact on local traffic operations and there was a less than significant impact as far as vehicle miles traveled. And you have all of those documents within your packet tonight. So the SQA document that was prepared was an initial study and mitigated negative declaration and we did find that with implemented uh mitigation

measures that there's a less than significant impact and all noticing requirements and uh public comment requirements were observed. And here we have before you on this slide some of the mitigation measures that are included for this project. They are also included in your packet. We can go back to these if you have questions on these um when we get to the discussion portion of the meeting. I'll rest here just for a second so you have time to look at them and I'll move on. And so for public comments, uh we did do public noticing in advance of the hearing, um including a newspaper notice, noticing to interested parties and owners and occupants within 1,000 ft of the project site and our notify me email list. Um we did receive some public comments um during the review of this project and they're included in your report. I would also uh mention that we did bring this to planning commission as was required. It was heard by the planning commission on April 28th um and we received comments um mainly in support of the project, but we did hear from some of our labor groups um about the the the workers that would be used for the project. We also heard a couple of comments about traffic and circulation, but again, overall support was generally expressed. As far as the planning commission themselves, we heard a unanimous recommendation for approval of the project, though we did hear um a small number of commissioners expressing some concern about the timeline for construction of the project. And so with that, that brings us to the recommendation,

which is complex. And so we can bring this slide back up later when we get to that portion of tonight's um discussion. And I believe that our developer team may have a presentation for you as well. I will mention that Rachel and I will remain on the dis. We do have some other support staff here if you have questions about um the project as we move forward and we will also have our developer team here. Thank you for our presentation. If the developer has a presentation they would like to give please approach the podium and welcome. Do the clicker again.

The clicker worked last time. Yeah. be easier, I think. Let's just make sure then get.

Sure.

Good evening, Mayor Lauren and members of the city council. My name is Kevin Choy and I am here on behalf of Harvest Properties and joining me today is Daisy Madal from Alta Housing. Thank you for hearing us tonight. We are excited to walk you through Bespoke, a fullbl mixeduse project bounded by Railroad, Fourth, Fifth, and B Street. There it is. It is the product of a true public private collaboration between Harvest Properties, Prometheus Real Estate Group, Alta Housing, Self-Help for the Elderly, and the City of Sonat. Before we dive in, here's a quick road map of what you will hear tonight. We will introduce the partnership, walk through the program, the development agreement, then step through the design, how we got to today, the community input that shaped it, and the benefits it delivers. A project of this complexity only works with the right team. Harvest and Prometheus are experienced local developers sponsoring the commercial component of this project. Between our two groups, we bring significant directly relevant experience to a site like this. And I would now like to hand over the the pres presentation to our affordable housing partner.

Sorry. All right. Thank you, Kevin. Good evening, mayor. Good council. My name is Daisy Madrial and I'm here on behalf of Alta Housing. As mentioned, Ala Housing will be will serve the residential developer of the bespoke project. We are 100% affordable housing developer based in the heart of Silicon Valley focused on Santa Clara and Sonteo County. We have over 50 years in experience and in addition to developing affordable housing, we also provide in-house property management and in-house resident services. Our extensive expertise ensures highquality housing in communities in the communities that we build. Working W working alongside us is help self-help for the elderly, a highly respected nonprofit that provides social services to seniors across the Bay Area. Self-help for the elderly will have a home on the ground floor covering nearly 6,000 square feet of our residential building ensuring that the essential service of our seniors depend essential service our seniors depend on will be available in downtown for the long term and of course none of this happens without the city of San Monteo the city has been a proactive partner from the beginning contributing land and shaping the project to advance the community's goals for housing transit accessible jobs in a lively downtown. The team has been working for a few years now and we believe we're well equipped to deliver a successful project in Saddale. Back to Kevin.

Thank you, Daisy. Starting with the residential side, Alta will deliver a seven-story building with 71 units of 100% affordable housing designed as large family. That is a specific designation. It means more than half the units are going to be two and threebedroom units. Alongside it, the commercial component delivers about 149,000 ft of class A office across six stories designed to concentrate highquality jobs immediately adjacent to transit. At the ground plane, we're delivering 18,000 square ft of community and retail space, roughly about 12,000 square ft of retail curated along Beach Street, 4th Avenue, and Fifth Avenue, and a permanent home for self-help for the elderly within the residential building. Below grade, a shared parking garage serves both buildings and importantly provides after hours public access, adding a real community benefit to the downtown core. All of this sits on a fullblock site with enhanced 16ft sidewalks and a new public corner plaza at 4th and B. The development agreement establishes a schedule of performance with defined milestones and accountability throughout the life of the project. Our baseline target is to deliver the fully completed project in under 10 years with contractual buffers that extend the outside completion date to approximately 14 and 1/2 years. buffer is intended to account for market cycles, affordable housing financing timelines, and other conditions outside of the control of any developer. I want to spend a moment on that 10-year baseline because without context, it can sound like a long period of time. The primary reason is the project is not a single building proceeding all at once. It is effectively two major projects that must be delivered in sequence. The affordable residential project cannot apply for state and federal funding and therefore cannot begin construction until the podium and garage infrastructure are

complete. A milestone that occurs around year five. So while the project includes two distinct buildings above grade, the residential and commercial components just cannot simply be constructed at the same time. The second reason is that reason is that the development agreement is structured around meaningful milestone commitments that can carry significant consequences if they are not met. That structure gives the city greater certainty that the project will continue to advance while requiring our team to be realistic and disciplined in setting a schedule we can all achieve. All that said, our goal is to beat the baseline. The development agreement sets outside framework, but our intent is to deliver the project early. Now to design. The single most important thing that we can do on a site like this is to get the ground plane right because that is what the community actually experiences every day. On B Street, we are delivering 12,000 ft of curated retail with 16 foot wide sidewalks, outdoor seating, and lush landscaping. The intent is a premier destination. The kind of street life that turns a block into a place where people want to linger and not just walk by. At the corner of Fourth andB, we are creating a new 1,800 foot plaza, a true gathering space anchored by retail frontage on both sides. This matters strategically. The plaza serves as a bookend for South B Street, anchoring and continuing the growth of the downtown core in a direction that the city council has always wanted within its general plan and identified as a priority. Stepping back to look at the commercial building as a whole. The 149,000 square ft of class A office is intentionally broken down into two main blocks centered on the lobby at the midblock. That split and massing is then accentuated by the materiality. The way the brick, the glass, and metal panel work together to give each block its own identity while still reading as a

coherent building. Bespoke fits comfortably within the established neighborhood of fabric. And for context, Kiku crossings is seven stories, Grammarcy is six, B Street South is five, and the Stratford is 10. Sustainability has been a priority for our team from the outset. It has shaped the way we approach the structural system, the building envelope, and the materials. As one expression of those goals, the commercial building is targeting a lead gold certification. Turning the corner to the fifth and railroad side, the project carries the same design language present on B Street and replicates it along Fifth Avenue. The same approach of breaking up the massing directly and accentuating that articulation through materiality. The building reads as one coherent project on every face. As you can see in this rendering, the project sits adjacent to Cal Train, which makes it exactly the location this region needs to be concentrating jobs and housing on. Sustainability also drove our structural choice. One of the most impactful ways this project can exhibit its sustainability is by the selection of mass timber as its structural system. A structural choice that is still rare at this scale in the Bay Area and one we believe is the right choice for a transit adjacent class A workplace in 2026. With that, I'll hand it back to Daisy to walk you through the residential building.

Thanks, Kevin. We take great pride in the residential building at Bespoke, a seven-story development with 71 affordable units designed for large families. The unit range from studios to three bedrooms offering a variety of living options for all family types in Sonteo. We will provide a generous outdoor courtyard, a dedicated play area, and community space to our residents. amenities that residents and families can truly benefit from. This development will give individuals and families in San Mato an opportunity to remain rooted in their community. What makes this project uniquely feasible is a partnership itself because a commercial developer is contributing the shared parking garage and providing financial assistance to the residential component. Our project is competitively competitively positioned to secure state and federal affordable housing financing, which in today's funding environment is a difference between a project that gets built and one that sits on paper. Back to Kevin.

Thank you. This project has been years in the making. It started in 2021 when our team competed and was selected through the city's process. In late 2021, we assembled the remaining parcels to create a full block site and in doing so grew the affordable count from 50 to 60 units. We submitted our pre-application in October of 2022 and in 2023, we realigned the design and density to bring the affordable unit count to 71 units, close to a 50% increase on the original submission. Our application was deemed complete in July of 2024 and in September of that year, we refined our business deal to provide the community with an even greater certainty of execution backs stopped by financial deposits. Tonight is the culmination of that work. Throughout that journey, we listened. The community asked for affordable housing. We are delivering 71 units, all affordable. They asked us to champion a local nonprofit. Self-help for the elderly has a permanent home here. They asked us to activate the retail environment. Our B Street strategy is built around that. They asked us to concentrate jobs near transit and respect the neighborhood fabric and the project scale, articulation and location do exactly that. Bespoke is a largely consistent with a vision the city laid out in the general plan 20 240 as well. I'll close out with the bottom line. Bespoke delivers 71 affordable units. A new permanent home for self-help for the elderly, an organization that has been serving Sanonteo for three decades and through this process can serve Sanail for many more. A parking garage which serves the residential and the public valued at about $10 million. $10.9 million in direct financial contributions, including $2.9 million in cash for the residential project and $8 million in impact fees. a $6.5 million residential backs stop deposit, a prevailing wage commitment, and a

property tax increase of approximately 1.2 million per year, a 540% increase over the baseline today. This is a project that was shaped by the community, backs stopped by real financial commitments, and ready to deliver housing, jobs, and ground floor vitality to downtown Samonteo. On behalf of the entire partnership, we respectfully request your approval. Thank you and we welcome your questions.

Thank you very much for that presentation. At this time I would like to open this item for public comment. So if anyone in council chambers would like to pardon me um yes I I think maybe what we'd like to do is is open it up for public comment and gather uh those uh slips and whatnot. But uh the council would also like to take a very quick bio break and return uh and when we return we will have the speakers. So thank you for your understanding. We'll be back in 2 minutes.

and for Carpenters Local 217 where I represent roughly uh 1,200 members here in San Monteo County, some of which are with me this evening. First and foremost, I'd like to acknowledge the development team and staff for all the hard work that they've put into getting this development where it's at today. Uh it's a culmination of a partnership that thinks outside the box and ultimately leads to housing, much needed housing here. So, thank you for that. That being said, I stand before you tonight in full support for the 445 B Street development. Approving the resolutions before you tonight will go a long way in bringing muchneeded affordable housing and good jobs to the city of San Monteo. Harvest Properties is committed to partnering with a responsible union general contractor for this development and by doing so will provide an opportunity that many developers leave out of the equation. One that will create jobs with living wages, health care, retirement benefits, while also providing apprentichip opportunities to local workers that include minorities, women, and at risk youth, helping them develop the skills necessary to be successful in the construction industry. These opportunities alone will leave lasting impacts on working families that are right here in San Monteo and throughout Sonteo County. So, I respectfully ask that you approve the resolutions before you this evening uh and move this project forward. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Darren Clark, followed by Scott Rathson and Alquinn and Haley Daza.

Good evening, mayor, council members, staff. My name is Darren Clark, field rep uh here in Sonteo County for Carpenters Local 217. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. Uh this project at 445 South B Street will provide good paying familyup supporting construction jobs for local workers right here in San Monteo County. These are careers that allow people to stay in their communities, support their families, and contribute to the local comm uh community. Equally important, this project will help address the urgent need for housing in Sono. We all know how critical it is to create more housing opportunities for working people who are currently being priced out of the community. Projects like this are a part of the solution. I also want to recognize that Harvest Properties has selected a responsible, experienced contractor that matters. It means the work will be done safely, professionally, and with a commitment to quality. We're proud to stand behind this project because it delivers real benefits, jobs, housing, and responsible development for this community. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Scott Ratson, followed by Elquin and Haley Daza and Kevin Simpson.

Good evening, council. I'm Scott Rathjen from the 217 uh Carpenters Union. Uh, I'd like to speak on behalf of this project. Uh, projects like these uh, put me to work right here at home. I'm a resident of Belmont. Uh, my wife was a stay-at-home mom for 13 years of my kids uh, life. They're 18 and 16. Uh, that doesn't happen without a union job. Uh, because that union job provided my family the health care, um, the welfare, um, the financial means just to live here. So, I I would really appreciate you guys uh putting this project through uh and keeping us working local. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Elquin and Haley Daza, followed by Kevin Simpson and Paul Krupka.

Uh good evening, uh mayor and council members. Uh my name is Elwendaza. I'm proud member of IBW Local 617. I've been a residentale for 30 years. Good evening. My name is Haley. Oh, sorry. Good evening. My name is Haley. Um, I am an electrical apprentice with Local 617 and I am with my dad right now. So, I've been able to raise my family here because developers in the community chose to invest in local workers. Those partnerships create stable careers, familyup supporting wages, and opportunities for people like me to build both our city and our future.

And because sorry, and because those opportunities existed, um I now have the chance to follow in my dad's footsteps. Um, I'm learning a skilled trade while earning and I while earning and learning at the same time and being able to build a real career in San Mato. So, this is why it's disappointing for us that the developer on the project is refusing to engage the local construction workforce through a community workforce agreement with all the mechanical crafts.

That decision doesn't just affect union workers. It also affects young people like me who are trying to build a future in this community. It closes doors for the next generation of skilled local apprentices. So, this project will generate millions of dollars in construction wages. The question is, will those wages stay here in Sonteo and support local families and businesses or will they leave our community? We're asking you to send a message that Sonteo values local workers, appren apprentichip opportunities, and projects built by the people who live and work here.

So, please encourage the developer to do the right thing. Partner with the local workforce. Invest in apprentices.

Thank you. Our next Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Kevin Simpson, followed by Paul Kryka and Deborah Sun and Linda Lum. Good evening, council. Um, I'm rising to support this project. Uh, not because I have any direct stake in it. I'm not a member of one of the trades, although I support them. Uh, I'm not a developer. I'm not a particular interest in the housing that's going to go here. But as a passionate supporter of a strong San Monteo, I think you can't argue with the benefits that this project would bring to the city as a whole and especially to our downtown. Um, we need a strong uh retail presence and this will extend it further uh south on B Street. We desperately need things like the agreement to put self-help for the elderly and other uh community services that aren't necessarily high income uh revenue generators. We are losing arts organizations. We're losing things like the ballet theater and other things uh throughout and and having this included is a really good benefit. Um, I just hope that when you dig into the details of this that we avoid some of the mistakes we've made in the past. Block 21 is sitting there for two years is an empty vacant lot with not one but two lovely chain link fence fences around it. And over closer to my neighborhood, we have what I call the cement pond or the mosquito hatchery at the corner of Fremont and uh Second Avenue. And those are examples of when the details weren't all clear before we proceeded. The end result of this project will be great. Let's hope that it isn't going to take us 14 years or even 10 and the project gets built as described because it is a really good project. And by the way, for the developers, please remember that we're a community and I hope that you won't take another

run at ripping out our beautiful pedestrian mall like you did a couple years ago. I'm a big fan of this project, but I'm not a fan of that kind of stuff. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Paul Krypka, followed by Deborah Sunoon and Linda Lum and John Medina. Paul, are you with us? We'll move on to Deborah Sunoon and Linda Loom, followed by John Medina and Richard Ball.

Mayor Lorraine, Deputy Mayor Fernandez, hide the rest of the city council. Oh, sorry. How's that? Better. Yes. Terrific. All right. As if you hadn't heard enough of me. Uh, but you all know me. My name is Debbie Soon and I'm on the board of Self-Help for the Elderly and this is my colleague. Hello. My name is Linda Long. Tell them how old you are, Linda. I am 89 years old this year and I volunteer at the senior center for 24 years. This is my 24th year.

Now, you remember that number, right? 89. We're going to come back to that in just a second. We are also joined tonight by other seniors in the audience who took buses to get here tonight and we're trying to find rides for everyone to go home. Some are struggling to stay awake. It's past many of our bedtimes. Um, and also members of our advisory board. And I want all of you just to stand so people can see who we are. Can everyone from self-help stand please wave? Thank you. This is so important to us.

As you know, Sato Self-Help has been in Central Park since its founding in 1992 by my mom Rosu. We serve the most at risk seniors in our community by providing hot meals both at our center and through home delivery to those housebound seniors who would otherwise go hungry. But more than just a hot meal, we provide that human touchstone that is so essential to fight isolation and loneliness which has been proven to shorten the lives especially of the elderly who are often neglected. Our programs held at the center are virtual.

Thank you, Deborah. Pardon? Thank you. Your time is up. Oh, thank you. Is it Oh, sorry. Time's up. Yeah, I got I guess I got too many to stand up, but thank you all so much for your support. Thank you. Thank you for your support. 10 years, she'll be 99. Thank you. Yes. I'll see you there. You look great for 89. Thank you, everybody. Please. You look great. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. I'm having a deja vu, I believe, up here. Good evening, mayor, council, staff. John Medina, business representative for the sprinkler fitters and a Sanonteo uh resident. I'm speaking tonight for the hundreds of Sonteo residents uh who are members of my union along with the electricians, sheet metal workers, plumbers, pipe fitters, and the hundreds of tip program, trades introduction program hopefuls looking to get into our apprenticeships. Um all those that I just represented, could you guys please stand up? And I want to thank all you for being here. It's super late and at 10:00 or as soon as public comment's done with this, please go home so you guys can get up early and go back to work. So keep doing what you're doing. So yeah, as soon as his comments over, thank you. Um, Prometheus and Harvest have met with us briefly and I thank you for you guys and the continued efforts. Uh, but we do not have any agreement for this project other than the union carpenter general contractor has stated. Um, the excuse that we always seem to hear is that the the price of unions cost up to 15% more. I'd actually like to ask how that's possible. Since this project is prevailing wage, it requires the area standard wages and benefits. And guess where the state gets that? know those numbers from it's our wages and benefit packages. So if wages are the same and you're going to tell me that a skilled and trained workforce that have graduates from a 5-year state approved apprentichip program are less likely to perform the work more efficiently or in a timely fashion with less change orders than normally trained out of area workers or that the price of pipe or wood or whatever the material is that they procure for that trade. I don't see it's a big difference in whether you buy it, whether the mayor buys it or whether anybody buys it. So there must be a it's got to be relatively the same. The only thing that's left for developers to do is to cut corner on the backs of labor. And that's why we're here standing up tonight. And I'm cutting down my my speech. I had a lot more to say, but we're even after all these things, we're still trying to get to a development agreement or some kind of

agreement. And we're looking forward to working with Prometheus and Harvest in the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next two speakers will be Richard Paul followed by Rick Bonia. Hi, how you doing? My name is Richard Ball. U kind of nervous first time speaking. Um grew up in Foster City with the wife and we're both uh Sanel residents over in Parkside. I've been in the union for 15 years now doing residential oh sorry residential like commercial. I got the chance and opportunity to switch over to the commercial side of it and I'm starting as an appren apprentice and getting to learn the uh the big stuff. Um I would love the opportunity to have this project. I used to, you know, as a kid, I was over at the Tabitz area. You like good memories there. And I like to be a part of a big projects going on lately. We did a cancer cancer research center, a hospital over there in uh San Francisco. Um projects like this seems like it's uh real positive and real big. Um and uh I just love the opportunity to be able to do that. And with my whole crew over here, all my fellow apprentices, man, they're solid. they're ready to work and yeah, we'd love it. We'd love to get involved in this and uh yeah, it's good to see you all. Hope to see you all in the future. Thanks.

Thank you. And our final speaker in chambers will be Rick Bonia.

Good evening, council members and staff. Thank you all very much. Rick Bonia here and I'm speaking uh actually on behalf of the housing action coalition who sent quite a few letters in support of this project as a member of the board there. I'm also a member of the board of the housing leadership council of Sanonteo County here. Uh while they haven't I think expressed any particular opinion one way or the other as an individual I support it because I support affordable housing. Uh and as a member of the Carpenters Union uh uh since 1977 almost 50 years now. Um I support this project because it's going to provide plenty of good union jobs. I look forward to hearing the outcome of negotiations that I think our other trades here may have with Prometheus. I hope they all are able to get a job here. But that said, they're going to do their talking. Carpenters do their own talking. As you can tell by looking at the orange and mostly yellow vests out here, we have a lot of carpenters here tonight. These are my brothers and sisters that I've worked with for many years. And this is a project that we could all look forward to. This is a project that I started working on as member of the city council in 2020. You saw the date 2021. Well, the council started working on it before that because we had to prepare the things before the land designation could change and all that stuff. This is a project we envisioned. The inclusive, transit oriented, sustainable, creating good jobs in our community. This is that job. Now, you have five items before you tonight that I think should be really easy. It's eminently approvable. The planning commission in their wisdom sought to approve it unanimously. I urge you to do the same. Thank you very much.

Thank you. moving to our virtual environment where our first speaker will be Brianna Morales. Brianna, please unmute your mic.

Hi everybody. Um, good evening and uh, my name is Brianna Morales and I am speaking on behalf of the Housing Action Coalition. We are a member supported nonprofit that advocates for building more homes at all income levels across California. Heck is here tonight in strong support of the bespoke project at 445 South B Street and we urge you to approve it. Um to say it simply, this project delivers 71 new homes 100% affordable for families and individuals earning between 30 and 80% of air uh of the area median income. These are homes for the people who keep this community running like teachers, caregivers, service workers, seniors who make bespoke stand out um is the partnership behind it. The city contributed land. Harvest Properties has committed money um to the point of $9.4 million in equity and an additional $6.5 million guaranteed as a financial backs stop for the affordable housing component. That kind of commitment from a commercial developer is rare and it should give this commission real confidence that this project will deliver. Um but beyond housing, this is a fullblock reinvestment in downtown San Mateo. um the square footage of sustainable class A class A office space built with mass timber, the square footage of ground flooror retail to activate beastry and a permanent home for self-help for the elderly um are all things that we should be supporting. And the project team has committed to prevailing wages and has been through years of community outreach and design refinement to get here. It's been in the works since 2021. The application has been complete. The environmental review was done and the deal terms have been approved by your city council. Further delays put 71 affordable homes at risk in this housing cycle which we cannot afford. So tonight you have the opportunity to turn years of planning and partnership into homes and we urge you to take it. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Our next speaker will be Scott Beiel. Scott, please unmute your mic.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Scott Peele and I represent many members of local union 467, the plumbers, pipe fitters, and HVACR service mechanics here in San Mato. Our concern is not with the project itself. We would otherwise support the development and the jobs it creates. Our concern is ensuring that a prevailing wage project receiving public support actually delivers the community benefits intended. When local skilled trades are excluded, Sanonteo loses opportunities for local apprentices, at risk workers, and young people entering career pathways through our state approved training programs. Millions in construction wages that could circulate through local businesses instead leave the community. We have also yet to hear a clear explanation as to how union labor costs more on a prevailing wage project where the wage rates are already established and skills in quality of work make for a more efficient delivery of product product. We respectfully ask the city to ensure strong local apprentichip participation requirements. The cost of something does not determine the value of that thing. Thank you.

Thank you. And our final speaker will be Robert White. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, thank you for this opportunity to comment on this project. I'm a 40-year resident of Satel. My congratulations to the council and city staff for taking on such a very complex important project. The response to the climate predicament takes many forms and has many interrelated components, housing being one of them. add in the general plan process which so many of us participated in in we spoke about a dynamic of vibrant sitail community for all bespoke will meet so many climate goals primarily reducing torturous commutes of people who live in the new project in a healthy safy healthy safe location it also meets a significant portion of the city's goals for arena by off by by building truly deeply affordable housing I urge the council to approve this project tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Lorraine. That concludes public comment. Thank you very much. Thank you to those who gave comment and I will close public comment for this item and bring this item back to the deis and ask any council members if they have any questions or comments. Yes, council member Diaz Nash.

Thank you very much through the mayor. Thank you to everybody who's here who's made public comment and thank you to staff for a very long development that that has been a good partnership between all parties. Uh I also just want to let everyone know I have spoken with the developer and some of the labor unions while researching this this presentation just to be above board. So, a couple questions. Um, I guess probably toward the developers and we heard a lot of comment from the labor unions about their desire to continue to work with you and try and achieve some kind of agreement so that local jobs can be can be maintained and apprenticeships can be given. Would you like to comment on that? there.

Thank you, Councilman Bernach. Um, we'd be happy to comment. Um, as some of the, uh, community members did say mention, we have been in communication with them. Um, and we are happy to continue to have further communications with them. So, um, we are committed to having those conversations. Um, as we are working through the project, the it's important for us to take it step by step and make sure that as we're going through that process, we maintain the viability of the project going forward. Um, going further than we can today in terms of, you know, going with any type of agreement is unfortunately something that we can't accept today, but it is something that we can continue to have conversations around. Um some of the things that we are doing today in addition to that uh communication is we are working with Swintton um one of the contractors that is uh represented within a lot of the unions and we'll be continuing to work through that with them on the precon of the project for both um the commercial and the residential.

Okay. Well, thank you and I myself would love to really strongly encourage you to find a way to get to Yes. Thank you. Um, I guess the next question perhaps is for Daisy and uh then Alta. Um, how are we going to decide who are the Oh, there you are. I couldn't see you with the roses.

Um, how are we going to decide who how tenants are selected for this development? Um, so typically depending on our our funding applications and what we're going for, that's going to build in the requirement as to who gets preference and whether that's live or work. Um, so once we get closer to the funding stages, we'll go ahead and take that into account when it comes to the preference portion of the residents.

But will there be a preference for San Mateans who either live or work in San Mato? Uh ideally that would be based on the local jurisdiction funding whether that's going to be implemented by the city of Sonteo when it comes to their funding or if it's going to be by the county of Sato. If I could just add to that response somewhat um council member. So the um the city has a local preference policy.

Um it is a we call it live work. So if you live in Sanonteo or work in Sonteo, um you are prioritized for the units. So that would apply. But what Daisy is also saying is that because the city is not the only funer, is not the only regulatory authority. Right now we are, but in the future, um the project will get tax credits hopefully. The project will be funded by the county hopefully. Um, so there there are always multiple regulatory agencies in play and the county for example has its own preferences that it imposes. Um, so it's not that 100% of the units will only get a city preference. However, the city's local preference policy will be applied to all the units where it can't be applied.

Okay, that's great. Thank you. Thank you for that. Um, what can we say about or what can you share with us about the circulation around the buildings? You know, I know that that some of the the neighbor neighborhood concerns have been about the loading and the unload unloading and things like that. What can we say about that? Zack.

Hi, Zach Doll, community development director. And I might also look, I believe we have um someone from our public works team on line as well. Um this project encompasses the full block and um the primary entrance to the garage is on railroad opposite the rail corridor. Um and then we do have um on street parking and some loading spaces around the building um designed to um support both the ground floor retail as well as um the community space where self-help for the elderly will be going. Um, and then obviously that feeds into our larger street network. So I don't know if there was something specific you were you were looking for with that broader picture, but generally speaking that's how it'll utilize that block and then plugging into the surrounding network.

Okay. I think it's just more how are we satisfied that the way it's designed that we will minimize negative impact on other areas because that certainly has been one of the concerns of the neighbors. Yes, we did have a transportation impact analysis as part of the project and that that was included as part of the initial study u mitigated negative declaration and we did look for that and obviously there's a much larger network at play and um so we really looked for how this block plugs into the larger street network um but obviously how cars go um once they leave the site that's outside of our direct control but um it does align very well within our um street network downtown and then um I guess if there's anything more specific I would look to our our public works um staff um for more specifics if they're needed.

No, I think that's fine. Um another question, this the affordable housing piece doesn't maximize the potential density bonus. So I'm wondering why and I don't know whether that's a develop that's a developer question. So maybe if you could explain your thinking as to why the density bonus wasn't fully maxed. Hi again. Um, so if we decide to go up the building, if we make it any bigger, providing more units, it does um make the project a little bit unfeasible. It creates higher construction cost. Um, so therefore it makes it it would yeah it would make the project a little bit more unfeasible for us to do and it would turn it in a change the construction type and then it would ultimately um spike up what we pay for constru for the construction cost.

Okay. I guess one of the things that I think is great about this project is the fact that there are lots of two and threebedroom um units and so I'm you know I I'm hoping that that was part of the equation as well that you might have fewer units but those units are going to handle more people. Yeah. So, with the two and three bedrooms, it does allow us to um house more individuals, whereas if you're just comparing additional studios versus one bedrooms, having two to three bedrooms does maximize how many people can live in there and the total headcount. Great. Thank you.

And um my last question is about what are specific procedures going to go on to monitor trees? I know there going to be a number of trees that are replaced that are taken out and are there any that are going to stay because we've had issues with previous developments where trees have been protected and then they haven't made it through construction. Is that an issue here? Now I

I'll look to the applicant team to speak more specifically to it, but I don't believe there are any um heritage trees that are being preserved as part of this project. There are a number of new trees being proposed, but um just wanted to confirm that was correct. So yeah, in this case um there not any large heritage trees on the site that are being preserved. So um but there will be a number of trees planted along the frontages as part of the new development. Okay. Thank you.

The mayor, sorry, just to speak to your earlier question about the the density on the site. I did want to note that as an early priority as directed by council was to look at familysized housing. And so I think the trade-off was fewer units, but as you noted, larger units. And so that was an early priority as part of the project objective was familysized units. So that's another reason um that we're looking at the number of units that we are.

Yep. I appreciate that. And I guess just in in summary, I would say that I am a strong supporter of the project. I would definitely encourage the developers to keep talking with the uh the unions who want to keep talking and try and find a way to get to Yes. and also to keep the jobs local and uh to have as many apprentices on the project as possible. But I think this has been a long project in the making. We all know that. Um and I think there's tremendous opportunity for tremendous addition to the residents of Sonteo, the office potential of Sanonteo and the retail downtown. So I'm excited about what this can be and I look forward to supporting it. Thank you. Uh, Deputy Mayor Fernandez,

I echo everything Council Member Diaz Nash said. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Anyone else? Council member Newsome. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, mostly comments, but a few questions. Thank you first of all for um finding and raising it from 60 to 71 units. We did ask you uh early on to go and find more family units. We heard that feedback a lot through Kiku Crossing and so I think uh 71 units that are two and three bedrooms is going to be a big win and be a lot more feasible for the need. Uh secondly uh I did want to ask have we this this project could take hopefully less than 10 years but 10 to 14 years and in that same time frame we look to um hopefully having grade separation for the railroads. So I'm curious, have we considered this as a possibility in that is as this building is being completed, we may be moving towards grade separation for the railroads. Does the plan and the layout of this uh allow us to still do that?

So we'll be having a grade separation study session um probably this fall. We'll be bringing forward we're actually updating the 2009 grades grade separation plan. But really the alternative that actually would be the most feasible It's costly overall. So, I'll just qualify that. But, um, the version would be kind of an overhead uh version. Uh, that would be up kind of like if you went to Disneyland, the Montreal version uh through throughout the city. That's pretty much the only feasible version that is out there, but it'd be very costly overall. So, it wouldn't be your triedand-true, you know, going under, you know, the grade step going under um the current tracks. But just to expound upon that, the design of this would prevent us from being able to do grade separation if we so choose.

We'll have to take that all we'll have to take that all in consideration right now. What my understanding is and I'd have to look and brush up those 2009 studies, but I believe it's on the basically the right of way um that is currently there. Okay. But don't quote me on that. We'll have a further study on that um overall. But I believe there's probably units or buildings that are probably built even closer uh to to the actual tracks than even this building right now.

Fantastic. Uh also would like to echo um Council Member Diaz Nash's request to really continue to work with our local unions. Um I'm really thankful that you guys have got to prevailing wage. Uh but I would encourage you to also hire local plumbers, sprinklers, sprinkler fitters, and electricians and HVAC. Um, please, please, please try to keep it local. Uh, in the past there's been projects in my district where Switton has pulled in people from out of state. We have plenty of skilled workforce here in the Bay Area, and if they're making prevailing wage, we should be able to hire. So, please keep the focus local. And then the last request um about trees was just that if at all possible, we try to stay with local, native, and indigenous trees. what we're seeing in Berling game with the having to remove these 40 and 50 year old eucalyptus is not something we want around buildings that we're building. So, I hope that we will continue to look at that and even though we have no heritage trees, please keep them um native trees. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Speaker Gitki.

Yeah, thank you for the presentation tonight. I'm really excited about this project. I think it delivers on affordability. It strengthens the downtown. It gives us a new space for the center for self-help for the elderly. So, I'm really excited. I do want to echo my colleagues comments. I appreciate all the hard work um with the carpenters union and securing a contract. If there's anything we can do, especially because the city is working on a PLA um for us to explore an agreement with the mechanical trades, um we should definitely look into that. Um just two quick questions. Um, I did visit the owner of the Tiny Bee Chocolate Shop who's currently next to Talbitz, and she um did express to me that she was not sure what the timeline would be for her to move out. Um, are we in communication with her, and are we helping her look for a new space?

Uh, yes is the answer to both. I don't have an update on the exact communication, but we can certainly follow up with that. our commercial team who engages with all of our retail tenants um speaks to them regularly, but I don't have an exact update on that question.

Okay, great. Um and then as I'm sure you heard tonight, there has been significant push in the city for um historic preservation um and just recognizing artifacts in the city that are historic or part of the city's heritage. And Talbot Store is part of that legacy. And so I'm just curious if you guys have thought in any way about how we can tie that into a theme um with this project. Thank you, Council Member Coroditzki. Um I think the first thing I'll just mention is the name bespoke.

It was intentionally chosen um as in heritage too and then also spokes from a bike, right? So Talbitz a lot of folks got their first bike from um and so that was an intentional choice. a logo that we've produced has that remnants in it as well. Um so you'll see tidbits here and there throughout the project um that kind of hearken back to the tall beds. Um wonderful. Thank you very much. Those were all my questions.

Okay. Thank you. Um, I will echo uh the comments of my fellow council members um related to an interest in uh continuing to engage with our our local unions and keeping uh local labor engaged and involved in this process. Um and uh the the support for all that this project brings. Uh I am privileged and honored to be here tonight for uh I feel a historic milestone for our city. another opportunity uh for the city of San Monteo in partnership uh with Prometheus Harvest, Alta, and Self-Help for the Elderly to uh add to the affordable housing downtown um and to our overall downtown environment. uh making use of a ground floor parking lot to do so uh is uh an investment in our future and uh I I'm privileged to be here for it. So I'll I'll leave it there. Uh see if anyone has any more questions or comments before we consider the slide staff had for uh a motion. Okay. In that case, could we please ask for the slide to be redised

to facilitate a motion? Do we have to go through each one individually or can we just everything on the screen? Okay. Okay. In that case, I would like to make a motion and just through the mayor, I can chime in. Yes, you can say uh if you wish that you move this staff recommendation which is on the screen now to encompass all of those items. Indeed. I would like to move uh for a staff recommendation as we see on the screen with everything included. Second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. City clerk, may we have a roll call vote, please? Certainly. Mayor Lorraine, yes. Council member Sphere Giddy, yes. Council member Diaz Nash,

yes. Deputy Mayor Fernandez. Council member Nuome, yes. Motion carries 5-0. Thank you. Thank you everyone. We do have more items. Yes, of course. Good luck.

Nice to meet you.

Congratulations. Talk to you. Go ahead. Pleasure. Thank you. Well, uh while while those are uh some are filing out, I I am hearing a proposal from staff to uh reorder our agenda again so that we might elevate another item. Um and uh that proposal is to have the next item effectively be the downtown business improvement area annual renewal. Uh, do I see any Well, okay. Do I see any objections from those currently on the dis? All right,

Mr. Mayor, maybe just one minute to allow people to Yeah, of course.

Well, just uh as as people are continuing to file out, it it sounds uh Mr. city manager that we have uh council support for another tweak to the agenda such that we can go with item 18 which was on your agenda downtown business improvement area annual renewal. We have presentations from Zach Raa senior management analyst and Mackenzie Jacobic the executive director of the downtown Samonteo Association. Okay. Good evening, mayor, city council. Uh I'm Zach Raa, senior management analyst and I'm here welcome happy to welcome Mackenzie Jacubic uh executive director of the downtown Sano association with a presentation. Thank you. We have a PowerPoint. Honorable mayor and city council, good evening. My name is Mackenzie Jacobic. I'm the executive director for the downtown Sonteo Association. I am proud to present our annual report for fiscal year 2025 to 26. It's been a year of engagement and transition and I'm excited to share our achievements. Next slide. Okay. Sometimes the best data is what you hear on the street. So this top quote, there's a lot of vibes here. I actually overheard in December at an event and I laughed really hard when I heard it, but then I thought, oh my god, there are a lot of vibes here. So I love it now. Um, the other quotes are from social media or emails. Going downtown

today made me proud to be a Sonteo resident. So many wonderful events in downtown Sonteo. Due to your input, the downtown mall is buzzing and I believe we'll only get to be more of an attraction in Sonteo and Sonteo. Pleasant surroundings, good food and drink, walkable, lively, unpretentious. That energy is not an accident. It's the result of our shared belief that a strong downtown is the heart of a strong Sanonteo. Downtown Sonteo is buzzing and our residents are feeling proud of the diversity, the vitality they see every day. Next slide. There's my kiddo. I should be kissing him good night. Um, downtown Sonato is thriving as a regional destination. In the past year alone, we welcomed 50 new businesses, including high-profile spots like Molly Tea and Repzado. We remain a foodie paradise with over 20% of our businesses in the culinary sector. But we're also evolving. The opening of arcade venues Nakokco and Clawsome as well as kiddo adventure indoor playground have added a new layer of family-friendly fun to our district. Next slide. Organizationally, this was a year of transition and transparency. We completed a financial review with Pentelli Financial Partners confirming our financial health. PFP found that DSMA remains financially stable with strong liquidity, declining liabilities, and a positive operating cash flow. We we welcomed a new executive committee, President Rafat Hadad, Vice President Lorie Morales, and Treasurer Kathy Levit. And just this past week, Robert Anderson was appointed secretary. Under this new leadership, we've re-energized our beautifification committee to keep a closer eye on the district's aesthetics. We brought on three new board members in the fall. Debbie Sunn from Self-Help for the Elderly, Mark Bartos from Bartos Architects, and David Zhao from Cafe A Bank. Our 12 board members are all volunteers. Some of them are here tonight not getting paid to be here.

Thank you so much. Um, and they they're here because they care so deeply for the downtown community. So, thank you to them for being so generous with their time and talents. Next slide. Oh, and there's Raf speaking uh to the Boston community right before um the Super Bowl. Next slide. Our work continues to center on three strategic pillars. Community engagement to drive traffic through events and marketing. Bid member engagement to provide real value to our 600 plus businesses. And civic partnership to ensure we're working handinhand with the city and other civic partners. Next slide. It was a landmark year for our events. The monthly head west marketplace brought thousands to our district throughout the year. While signature successes like Booze and Bruise on B Street and Boba Day continue to be regional draws, we even introduced our new mascot, Mateo the Fox. You can go to the next slide. There's Matteo. During the September Arts and Culture Fest and established new traditions like our Santa visit. Next slide. On this slide is our full list of events that we either coordinated, participated in, or supported in one way or another. From the sports warm-up with the CSM Bulldogs to the Lunar New Year event uh which had a parade that featured 14 business stops, we had more than 20 unique activations. Over 80 merchants directly participated in these events, showing the immense collaboration uh spirit of our business community. Next slide. Our digital presence has never been stronger. We reached the major milestone of 10,000 followers on Facebook this February. Uh, more importantly, our content reached 1.7 million views and we saw double-digit growth across Instagram and our community newsletters. We aren't just posting updates. Were building a brand for downtown that keeps it top of mind for the Bay Area. Next slide. We believe a supported business, a supported business is a successful one. We handed out welcome packets and met

one-on-one with businesses throughout the year. We maintained a 50% open rate on our member newsletters. Our campaign, Shop Small to Win Big, didn't just incentivize local shopping. They told human stories of our small businesses through professional digital storytelling. Um, I'd like to show you or I'd like to highlight a shop small to win big video from Golden Moon Gallery, one of our wonderful businesses. These videos were put together by Gary McIll and were a collaboration between DSMA and the Sanonteo Area Chamber of Commerce. So, the next slide is the video. My name is Ellen Chaboya. My husband Nick and I own Golden Moon Gallery in downtown Sano and we've been in business for 9 years. We got started with my business because my husband is an artist and we wanted to find a way to bring handmade things to San Mo. He tattoos full-time and we travel all around the world for his tattoo work and wherever we go, we try to find new beautiful things and bring them back here. I love Sano. I'm a transplant from the east coast. My husband is born and raised Bay Area guy and I absolutely love Sanonteo. We live about a mile from our store and the people here are wonderful. The weather is amazing and I just feel really really lucky to have a beautiful business and a historic building in Sano. It's very exciting and we just love everybody we meet here. So I think having good weather and good uh good environment makes for happy people that we meet in our space.

We love you too, Alan. Um oh, next slide. Thanks. Um so this slide talks about some of the the partnerships we do, but I did just want to celebrate the collaboration with city leadership and staff. Keeping downtown clean, safe, and vibrant is a monumental task that requires a lot of coordination among many organizations. Um, so I especially want to shout out Sonteo PD, particularly the downtown unit, parks and recreation, city manager's office, and last but not least, public works, and the downtown coordinator, uh, my officemate, Lance Hall. So, um, the shared space that Lance and I have, um, is is a wonderful gift from from the city for me to use it, and it really streamlines communication. Um, I think it's a it's a great, uh, great way for us to work. Um, next couple slides, we have power some of our hotspot powerwashing. Uh, that was last fall. Um, and then the next one is the wonderful explorer program. They really helped us out at Boba Day. um got so many kudos. They were helping to keep people safe crossing the street. It was really awesome. Next slide. Okay. When Rafod joined on as president in January, he laid out his vision for the organization. He said downtown Sano is clean, safe, and vibrant, but it could be cleaner. It could be safer. It could be more vibrant. So, this is something we think about every day. Um, and with that in mind, our primary goals for the upcoming year include 25% increase in our beautifification budget, updating our bylaws for 2026 best practices. I don't think they've been updated in two decades, and expanding our marketing reach. Next slide. Financially, the DSMA remains steady and strong for this fiscal year, uh, which will end on June 30th. We estimate total income at 417,000 with expenses at 383,000. For the coming year, we're budgeting

420,000 um income and expenses with 30% dedicated to cleanliness and beautifification, 24% to marketing and activation. We maintain a healthy reserve uh to ensure that we can remain resilient amongst or against any economic headwinds. And as we close, I just want to leave you with some photos from the past year. Um, we're so excited to bring you even more vibes in fiscal year 2026 to 27. So, you can just kind of scroll through. Next year, I'll add music. That'll be good.

Thank you. I I love that photo so much. Thank you to the city council and to city manager's office for your unwavering partnership. Together, we're building a district that's resilient, welcoming, and undeniably vibrant. Um, I'm happy to take your questions uh whenever the time comes. Thanks.

Thank you very much for your presentation. And at this time, I would open up the item for public comment. So, anyone in council chambers can bring a request to speak slip to the city court. Anyone online uh can raise your hand at this time. If you're on the phone, you may press star 9. City clerk. Mayor Lorraine, we have received a total of seven requests to speak. Um so the per council adopted rules and procedures that would set the time limit at 3 minutes per speaker. Um we'll begin with our inperson request to speak. If I call your name, if you could please line up to my right and we'll make sure we receive your public comments. And our final speaker on this item in our virtual environment will be Amy. So our first three speakers in chambers will be Deborah Sunn followed by Rafat Hadad and Robert Anderson.

All right, I'll do better this time. You all know who I am. I don't have to say that again. And we don't have to go through numbers because McKenzie's done a wonderful job. What you may not remember is that I was on the uh DEI task force some years ago during CO and our task force worked with the city to actually find the artist and commission the mural that was called the beast street corridor at that point in time which has now become the pedestrian mall. You've seen how much um McKenzie can do with so little money. The fact of the matter, I've had a chance to work with MAC since well, for almost five years, and some of the small popup events have turned into these huge full event licenses. And if I'd really like to know what the dollar spent on her budget per headcount now brought in looks like, it probably is pennies on the head. self-help also benefited from its collaboration with DSMA. So the qualitative side of it is an organization which felt very siloed has now been invited and engaged and feels like it is a full participating um resident of the community. I believe that the watchword that we're going to see going forward is collaboration. We've already started to see evidence of that. Max's done such a great job that organizations now want to know how they can do events with us. I think that is a marvelous testament to how effective this organization has been. So, I urge you for the renewal of the downtown business improvement area, the of the assessment, which is essential not only to keeping but increasing the vibrancy

and the attractiveness of our downtown area. Did it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Raf Hadad, followed by Robert Anderson and Mark Bartos.

Uh good evening, Mayor and City Council. Uh my name is Rafat Hadad. I am the owner of 3B's Coffee in downtown San Mateo and the president of the DSMA. Uh I'm here tonight to express my strong support for the renewal of the downtown business improvement area and the continued work of the downtown San Mateo Association. Uh for the past 24 years, uh I've been here for that long. I've had the privilege of serving our community and during that time I have seen firsthand the positive impact DSMA has made on our downtown through marketing, beautifification, community events, and partnership with the city. DSMA has helped keep downtown San Mateo clean, attractive, and welcoming. Uh in recent years, especially after the challenges of COVID, uh DSMA has become even more important. It has played a key role in supporting local businesses and helping bring energy back to our community and our downtown. Um and here I would like to thank a previous economic development uh manager, uh Jennifer Chen. She was a uh a good advocate for the DSMA and the downtown businesses. She has helped a lot. Um and thanks to Zachary also for taking her spot for now. Thank you for your time. Um uh also I have personally seen the value of the DSMA efforts and I want to recognize the executive director uh McKenzie and the DSMA board prior to uh my presidency and uh the current board for their dedication and leadership. Their work has strengthened

collaboration between businesses and helped build a stronger downtown community. uh DSMA is essential to maintain a vibrant and successful downtown for both residents and visitors. For those reasons, I strongly encourage the city council to approve the renewal of the downtown business improvement area. And uh as McKenzie said and I said that in the beginning of the presidency uh let's keep downtown safer, cleaner and more vibrant and hopefully we can help with McKenzie and you guys uh keep the downtown vibrant and please keep be straight as a pit mold. So please do that. So thank you. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. So, our next three speakers will be Robert Anderson, followed by Mark Bartos and Kathy Levit.

Hi, good evening. My name is Robert Anderson and uh I'm here to speak in favor of renewing the downtown uh business improvement district. Um I'm currently on the board. I'm a past president of the organization and uh current secretary. So, I know the organization well. And what I can tell you is it's a grassroots organization um that really has a pulse of what's going on in downtown Sanel. Um downtown is really a crown jewel of Sanelo. Um four generations of my family have shopped in in downtown and has changed a lot uh since my grandparents' time. But what I can tell you is the DSMA is really the engine that pushes the downtown uh forward. Um, downtown Santo consists of a community. We have business owners, we have property owners, and people who come downtown to shop. The DSMA is engaged with all three of those groups. So, I can definitely say um with my experience there, we are a grassroots organization that really all work as volunteers for the betterment of downtown. Um, finally, I'd like to thank the council for their support. Um, I have seen all five council members downtown engaged uh coming to community events and uh patronizing our businesses. So, your engagement is definitely appreciated and uh thank you for everything you do.

Thank you. Our next three speakers will be Mark Bartos followed by Kathy Levit and Kevin Simpson.

Hi everybody. Mark Bartos, Bartos Architecture. I'm a current member of the board and I wonder what happened to everybody. This must be so boring. So, to me, this seems like just like a no-brainer. Just I'm surprised that you have to even go through this process. I'm kind of a newbie here. Uh, I'm here because of McKenzie because um, she does a fantastic job and this thing just has to keep going and it's I think it's probably better than it's been in the past. Um, I represent the Southside. My architecture firm is on 8th Avenue. We're across from Charlie's Tacos. So, whenever we have our board meetings, I let them know that I'm representing the Southside. Um uh it's really important to know that the DSMA is really the the critical thing that I see in it. It's a conduit for communication with the public. Okay. It's not just our small group, but when I go to the meetings, I learn. I share with my staff. My staff gets um uh enthusiastic about the downtown area and uh it helps me when I have to provide them a little lecture. If I see a cup of Starbucks in the coffee, Starbucks coffee in the office, I have to ask them, did we spend company money on that? Because why didn't you go down to Rafage?

Thank you. Okay, I'm done. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Our next two speakers will be Kathy Levit, followed by Kevin Simpson.

Good evening, mayor and city council members. Um, my name is Kathy Levit. Um, I am a resident of Sato and I'm the manager of Tri Countyy's Bank on Third Avenue. Um, I'm also the treasurer of the DSMA and this is my third time up here um asking to keep the renewals going. Year after year after year, the DSMA has only gotten stronger and better and more vibrant. And thankful to all of you because I too see you downtown at all the events supporting the our events and all the other events that are going on in Sato. So, it's very much appreciated. but also to McKenzie. It just proves that her partnership and collaboration with the different groups in Sonato is really putting the downtown on the map. Um so very appreciative to that and just want to keep that momentum going. Um also as a business um for I have been able to take advantage of the weekend crowds by sponsoring a table at Lunar New Year. um which was extreme extremely fun. So I got to present Tri County's Bank to the weekend people that I never really get to see. Um and I do believe that other businesses are going to start seeing that as well and they too will sponsor tables at the downtown Samato Association events. Um that was Lunar New York. Oh, also be booze on B Street. I open up my branch. We're closed on Saturdays, but I open up my branch and allow the people to come in to for a quieter uh experience. Sometimes the kids get over stimulated down on B Street and they come up and just color and invite the families in and that's a chance for me to show my business to them. Um, you know, without, you know, just come in and see who we

are. Um, so it's been a great benefit. But also just recently, which I'm very happy about, I have two girls, two daughters, ages 20 and 24, who three years ago, had I told them, "Go downtown Sanonteo and go to dinner or go to a movie," they would say, "Mom, it's so boring down there." Whereas just recently they have been inviting their friends and going downtown Samonteo, taking in a movie, having a dinner down in the pedestrian mall, sitting out on those tables. And I am so grateful for that because as a mom, you know, we want our kids in a safe environment and I feel very comfortable with them downtown because it's clean, it's safe, I feel like they're going they're close to home and um I'm just so appreciative that they are inviting their friends to now come downtown because it has been fun for them. So, we're just hitting all kinds of generations and I just want to make sure we keep that momentum going. Thank you.

Thank you. And our final speaker in chambers will be Kevin Simpson.

The last 15 minutes have made me very happy because it's good to celebrate success. And who knew when a merry band of pranksters and I snuck five picnic tables on to be street um in the in the dead of night under the cover of a darkened moon. um to put some seating there to try and keep this idea of a pedestrian mall going. And the handoff to the city and to McKenzie and to the DSMA has been nothing short of amazing. Do you remember when people were coming in here telling you to we need parking spots where B Street is now? Are we ever going to turn the page back on that? This should teach us that creative thinking, positive energy, and sticking to our guns in the face of sometimes sour opposition have great value. And I just want to say thanks to McKenzie and the DSMA board and all of the merchants and the city council and the city staff. Christina and I sat on many meetings together when we were trying to come up with programming ideas. Um, and good luck in your your next adventures. Um, please remember the lessons from this experience. Celebrate what we've achieved. But now, let's spread that through the rest of downtown, north and south, both ends of B Street. We have two other small downtowns at least that I can think of that we could bring the magic to. So, there's so many lessons here for the whole city and so much value to be unlocked. This community is completely unlike any other on they can try and copy us in St. Carlos or Berlingame with their fancy plaza with the orange seeds

but they can't equal the sheer homegrown uh success that we have. So thank you very much and let's keep it up and uh please approve this and someone please put an ankle bracelet on McKenzie. Thank you. Thank you. moving to our virtual environment where our final speaker will be Amy. Amy, please unmute your mic.

Hi. Um, good evening, mayor and council members. Uh, my name is Amy Lee and I would like to lend my support to adopting this resolution and to support McKenzie. Um, I've seen firsthand the impact that she's been making. So, I would say in short, she plans, she activates, and she delivers. Um, I've been volunteering at her events for the past two years. So, I've seen firsthand how the crowds have grown, the social media marketing, it's super on fire right now and how people are staying and shopping in downtown Sonato. I mean, in short, people are just having fun. Um, friends comment to me about how vibrant the downtown area is. So, and don't don't take my word for it. Um, if you remember the opening slide that, um, you showed with the Lunar New Year dragon dancers, um, that crowd was like so deep and so loud. That energy and that vibrancy, that's the proof that you need. And even just this past weekend, I was walking around the Head West Street Market and I was getting so many good vibes from the vendors. I bought them some things. We had long conversations. It was great. The weather was good, too. So, I'm so happy that the DSMA's work continues to make our spot on the peninsula shine and draw people from all around the Bay Area. So, in closing, thank you, council, for your support of this resolution.

Thank you, Mayor Lorraine, that concludes public comment. Thank you, and thank you to those who gave comment. I will now close public comment for this item and bring it back to the dis for any questions and comments from our fellow council members. I see Deputy Mayor Fernandez reaching for the mic. Can I move that we accept the report? I imagine there might be some other comments we may need to get through first. Okay. So, I see uh Council Member Diaz Mash.

Yes. Ultimately, I will absolutely support that. But I just wanted to thank everybody related to DSMA. I have been, I think, at almost every board meeting since I got on council. I have worked with so many of you in so many different ways. And everything that the community has said about you and that you've said about yourselves is absolutely true. What I would say, you are all creative. You are all accountable. You are all focused on what's important. and you are also so devoted to having fun and helping San Mateo have fun and that is just contagious. Um, so I'm so excited. The one thing I would suggest to our city manager moving forward as we get into our downtown specific plan and if our retiring Miss Horrisburgger could still be here, I would tell her too. I think as part of the downtown specific plan, we have to think about what we call the mall because it's gone from the corridor to the down B street pedestrian mall. I think there's got to be a name there as part of our overall work so that it isn't just a functional name, but it really is something that speaks to everything we want and everything that's been developed. So, that's my only comment. I congratulate you and can't wait to see a lot more.

Thank you, Council Member Council Member Sphere Gadiski.

Um I just want to echo um my colleague um Council Member Nash's feedback and comments. Um McKenzie, you're doing an amazing job. I actually was running when you had first joined um the DSMA. So it is amazing to see how much progress we've made in the last few years. Um, Rafot, I also want to congratulate you on your new role as president and Robert, um, your new role as secretary. Um, I do have a few things. I hate to be a nit and nitpick. Um, but the report does highlight that about 100,000 was spent on downtown cleanup efforts and beautifification. Um, again, when I first kind of got involved with the city a few years ago, we heard a lot about the cleanup efforts downtown. Um, and I'm curious, you know, how we feel in terms of perception, if that has changed, um, if if you're hearing that people are feeling like things are cleaner, businesses are happier with that. So, I'm actually going to let Rafat answer that because he's talking to people all day every day and he's shared some comments with us. True.

Not to put you on the spot.

No, it's okay. Um, you know, uh, comparing I've, as I said before, 24 years ago, uh, there's a big difference. Uh, and given the fact that downtown San Mato has grown that much with the foot traffic, I believe that keeping the downtown clean and the sidewalk clean is by itself a a kind of an achievement. So, we like more. So, we don't want to stop uh here uh by saying it's clean. I've had a lot of people who come to downtown uh at least on my block where things were not as clean and now they see the difference um having the porters you know that we have. Um and also uh we need to keep those uh people working around the clock. Uh we're doing it 7 days a week so uh people can see the difference and they can see the streets cleaner, the sidewalk cleaner and the city is doing also a good job by keeping the streets cleaner. So thanks Lance is a good asset. you know I'm telling you uh you know he has helped a lot by keeping this at least he addresses all this uh issues uh hotspots you know he gets on it he tells us and then he tells you know the city uh for that reason so I hope uh you have that

great is great to hear can I keep you up here for just a second sure yes um so another question um since you are a business owner and you do talk to the businesses Yes. Um but um some of the businesses continue to site slower weekday activity and I'm curious what strategies DSMA or even yourself as a business owner are employing um or pursuing to try and curb that. Okay. Uh and also I'd be curious to hear where we could help with that.

Right. Uh so prior to covid uh the Monday through Friday uh there were a lot of companies startup companies and then office uh was kind of full uh after co we see the decline. We see some activities right now that there is a better Monday through Friday but we have done a great job on the weekends. uh as a business owner uh Sunday was really the slowest day for me and the weekends. Now actually with if you see the foot traffic in downtown Saturday, Sunday is crazy. We have brought a lot of foot traffic through events through partnership with other events that they're doing in downtown San Mateo. So I think the city maybe can help with um those offices can be maybe more full by some companies maybe they can have those offices open to the public. So if you can maybe activate you know advocate with uh those uh building owners to at least you know have those offices open again.

Awesome. Thank you. Um shifting gears um to the city manager. Um so the report says that we opened 50 businesses this year which is amazing. Um I am curious what the corresponding um closure and vacancy rate is and what the net growth for the downtown is overall.

So I haven't geofenced the downtown specifically but I know that across the city our vacancy rate remains at about 4 to 5% for retail which is really good. Um, other cities are envious of that type of vacancy rate. So, it's pretty low overall. And what we see is, and I know the DSMA could probably speak to this, is the minute you hear a restaurant or another business closing, there's already um the interest or the setup for the next um retailer. So, it's not, you know, sitting vacant over a long period of time. You'll see as soon as one closes there's the tenant improvements or it's coming in the permit here uh to you know see new activity or repurposing of the space overall. Also just going back to the last um questioning that you had just about commercial office. You know just tonight you guys took a bold step forward not only from you know providing affordable homes but just energizing Southby B. That's the future of our downtown. Then you have the Drager's project which you know they're getting to their final you know final kind of almost to the finish line on their building permits. That's real. Once you get there you spend a lot as a developer to do that. You're going to see that building be demolished here hopefully uh later this year and then see a new development over there. Then you have a 30,000 ft new commercial office that's also going to be going up I believe off of third across from Verata um as well. And then you have doughnut delight project that is also going uh through the process. So we're going to see a lot of development. It's going to be a lot of uh coordination and construction management too because it's all going to be happening uh within our you know this close network of the downtown. We also pride ourselves so um our assistant city manager and I and our community development director we went and paid a visit to Vata because we always want to check in with them right and see how things are going. They're probably our largest employer right now in the downtown. Right Mackenzie?

Mills is one.

Okay. mil mills, but Verata Vicotta's up there and so they are in five days a week. That was one great thing to hear. Um, and then they still I asked them if they had their I think it's like the three the 333 program they call it and they still have that too as well. Um, where they give their employee uh funds to go and uh spend it in the downtown as well. Keeping that momentum. Um, as new businesses come in, we roll out the red carpet. we visit them as well, especially in the offices, you know, not on the not on the ground floor, but we'll go and pay the visit. Um, right now we're going through a transitional period in our economic development division as Jennifer Chen uh left the city. And so, we're going to restructure and that's going to be part of that, you know, the three-year economic development work plan. That's where we're partnering with our DSMA and with our chamber and with city staffs that we're all rowing the boat in the same direction. We're all hitting our stride together in partnership.

Thank you. That was a great overview, even more than I expected. Um, one more question, I swear. Um, so thinking about the pedestrian mall, um, that was a 3 to 5 year, you know, project. Um, I guess I'm trying to understand like what would be, um, the city council's next steps in terms of expansion or investment in the pet mall. So, at the time, I believe this was in 2023 or early 2024, the previous council took action. So, there was a push, you know, you might have heard uh Mr. Simpson talk tonight a little bit, but there was a push of opening back up uh the ped mall between 1 and 2. Uh the council decided to say, you know what, we're going to keep both of them closed. Um the permanent closure was between second and third. There still is technically uh possibility for well what it is is up for further consideration discussion when we do our downtown plan about the permanent closure between first and second. The main goal was is giving it a shot to actually activate and that was kind of the mission and direction that the council gave us at the time and I really believe in working with DSMA and the chamber and all our partners that we're really headed in the right direction. you're seeing vibrancy and action uh down there. And so where the next step with that'll be is as we have the downtown plan discussion, that's where we're going to talk about our streetscape, right? Our downtown mall. There's all these different pieces and dynamics so that we keep a vibrant downtown together. That's where we'll have these discussions uh and talk about, you know, what those permanent improvements are and what we're looking for.

Great. Thank you. And I yeah, I obviously I'm going to support this too, but um I appreciate the extra context. Thank you, Council Member Nome.

I'll be brief. Thank you. Through the mayor. Um yeah, sorry. I just want to echo my appreciation. I think everything that's been happening in downtown has been incredible. Um, you know, we did, as Kevin mentioned, get a lot of push back early on about reopening at least one block. And I'm really proud of us that we've stood our ground and I'm really happy to see all the good things that have come to fruition. Uh my only comment in kind of listening to everybody's recaps uh was that um I think we should try to look as as both a city and our DSMA u to approaching our office buildings especially in the surrounding areas our office workforce and try to uh continue to have outreach to them. And I'm sure you're doing some of this, but I'd be interested to hear um that you're marketing to them, that you you got them on email strings. Um even having events downtown during the week uh at like a lunchtime would be a great activity for businesses and once they see what's there, they'll come back. So, you know, that's my only, you know, my only piece of feedback would be to continue to like look at that as a market segment that's not completely realized. So, thank you and keep up the great work. indeed. Um, I will I will simply echo a lot of the the the comments. I mean, I I'll just be brief and say I I share the energy uh that that's in the room. Um, and I'm just inspired by it. It's been an amazing transformation and I appreciate uh frankly so many board members coming here and spending their time to talk up uh what's been happening. I I appreciate self-help for the elderly being represented within DSMA and um I'm inspired by the

possibilities. We we've heard about the the interest in in diversity of those who can collaborate to make downtown uh an active and vibrant place throughout the week 247. Um so I um will take that in and see um where we can go next. uh but this is uh a a wonderful another another very successful year that has exceeded expectations and I think and uh I'm very appreciative of the work of those in this room to make that possible. And with that I would entertain a motion.

I make said motion. Do we have a sec a second from the deputy mayor? Uh city Oh, I'm sorry. And just to clarify, the motion is the staff recommendation to adopt the resolution that's uh part of the agenda packet. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for that clarification. That is indeed where we are. And city clerk, certainly. Council member Nuome, yes. Deputy Mayor Fernandez, yes. Council member Diaz Nash, yes. Council member Sphere Gaditzki, yes. Mayor Lraine, yes. Motion carries 50. Thank you, folks. And through the mayor, it's 10:45. Should we extend the meeting?

Well, let's ask our city council members uh through a I guess I'm uh do I forget. Do we need a motion and for that? So, uh thank you through the mayor. I would like to motion to extend the meeting to 11:30. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second to extend to 11:30. City clerk, may we have a roll call vote, please? Certainly. Council members Gaditki. Yes. Deputy Mayor Fernandez. Yes. Council member Diaz Nash. Yes. Mayor Lorraine. Yes. And Council Member Newsome. And we can finish earlier than that, but yes.

Just real quickly through the mayor, just looking at just the overall agenda if we want to go ahead and hear 19th Avenue and then maybe do the charter amendment and then we can actually push I haven't talked to Martin yet, but the SB77 to the next meeting. We do have uh some some space over there actually on that. support from that. Okay. He's if you guys are okay with that. Yeah. Looking around, uh that's two more items till 11:30. I think uh it seems as though that would please the council and probably the public and probably staff. All right, sounds good. Thank you. Yes, Council Member Speaker. Thank you. Um Mr. Mayor, I need to recuse myself on this item. Oh,

yes. Thank you. Um through a financial stake, so I'm just going to leave. Thank you. Thank you for that statement. All right. So, we are now moving forward to what was listed as item 15 in our agenda. It is 19th Avenue Fashion Island Boulevard multimmoal improvement projectformational update. And we have a presentation from Bethany Lopez, senior engineer with public works. Thank you. Good evening, Bethany, and welcome.

Good evening. Thank you. My name is Bethany Lopez. I'm a senior engineer with the city or with the public works department. Tonight, we're going to be presenting on the 19th Avenue Fashion Island Boulevard project. We're going to be seeking feedback on the overall design as we're bringing the final design to you and any remaining considerations that you may have and then we're going to talk a little bit about the construction phase for this project. Um, talk through some of the priorities for that and hope to get some feedback for that as well. We'll talk through the project goals, a little bit of history, some of the outreach that we've done, about the final project design. Um, we'll walk through some of the funding, which we're really excited about, and next steps, uh, along with the discussion. So, you've seen a lot of these slides before, so I'm going to go through them a little bit quickly. Um, you'll see, uh, we have the same project goals that we've had throughout the project, um, outreach process. So, we're hoping to relieve congestion along the corridor. There's a lot of congestion out there now. Um, and so this project will be seeking to alleviate a lot of that. In addition, we're going to be working to improve safety for bicyclists and pedestrians through the congestion relief. We'll be looking to improve transit uh travel times. And then overall, one of our goals was to try to limit parking loss to the extent possible. There's been a long history with this project. Uh we've heard a lot of feedback from the community um about just congestion along the corridor. We have done a few things for that including a corridor study back in 2019. Um that lent to uh reviewing how to alleviate congestion along the corridor. We also did a signal synchronization project back in 2021. Um and while there were some improvements to the congestion, it didn't necessarily alleviate it to the extent that the community was looking for. There's also bike and pet improvements uh that are proposed through our master plan documents. And then from 2023 to 2025, there was the 10192 mobility hub and smart corridor plan. This was an

extensive outreach process that helped identify uh the current design alignment that we have for the bike facilities with this project. Moving into the project design phase, this is where we're at now. The project design started in June of last year and it's looking to be completed in June of this year. So just about a month from now. During that time, we've done a lot of outreach. Um so obviously this is really small text. I'll I'll walk through it a little bit. Um but we've done like I said a decent amount of outreach uh since the beginning of the project. We started our design back in June. We had an online survey from June to July. What that was hoping to do is collect a lot of similar feedback from our or similar to what we were trying to collect in our first community workshop. We held a um sustainability and infrastructure commission meeting in August. We came to you the first time in September of last year. That's the first time that we also presented the traffic analysis for this project. We went to the PTA meeting for College Park the very next day um to make sure that they were aware of the project and get feedback from them. We held our second community meeting in November uh both on excuse me both in person and we held a virtual version of that and again all seeking to get different um types of feedback from different folks in different avenues um and at different points in the project design. So trying to make sure that we touch base with the community where we had updates for them. We met with the student coalition. So there was a interested student group um at the council meeting actually and we were able to facilitate a meeting with that group um later in November to talk through this project which was really great. And then we held our final community workshops in April uh just a about a month ago. We had our second sustainability and infrastructure

commission a few weeks ago and we're here now at our second city council meeting. And so like I said we're looking to complete the project design in June. So with this, we've completed five community workshops. We've sent out over 30,000 mailers. Each one of those was in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Along the corridor, we placed over 135 A-frame posters. This was also in English, Spanish, and Chinese. These were not just along the corridor. They were at community community destinations like the Hayward Park Cal Train Station, um the Fiesta Gardens Park, uh things like that. We will have completed four council and commission meetings. We've had alongside these public meetings, we've also had targeted meetings with local businesses and interest groups. And we'll have completed about 12 months of outreach for this project. So, moving into the final design, uh we've heard consistently several themes. So, the multimodal connectivity, safety, congestion relief, uh and signals, sorry, street lighting and landscape improvements. So, just diving right in again, you'll have seen these before. The project is proposing to make these connections all the way to the Cal Train station. These are currently absent now. Um, we're proposing to upgrade the facilities from class 2 bike lanes, which are right adjacent to the travel lanes, to class 4 bike lanes, which provides a separated buffer. And then the alignment itself is something um that again we've talked about. The southerntherly side of the bike lane stays on the or sorry, the eastbound bike lane stays on the southerntherly side of the corridor. The westbound bike lane comes all the way to Grant and cuts over to the southerntherly side. And the reason for this is to be able to avoid the Delaware ramps, the freeway ramps. So again, on the westerly side, we have a two-way cycle track or two-way protected bike lanes. And so this is what this looks like. This is from Pacific to Grant. Um and then from there

we have more traditional looking bike facilities, protected bike lanes on either side of the road that align with the direction of travel of the adjacent uh vehicle lanes. For the pedestrian facility changes, again we have a gap here on the southerntherly side. There's a lot of challenges with the existing interchange in this area that created challenges with trying to incorporate uh pedestrian sidewalk on all sides. So again, because the the corridor runs through the middle of the interchange, there's a lot of issues with columns and things like that. And so our focus was really to try to get the bike or sorry, get the pedestrian facilities completed on at least one side of the roadway. And so this is where we are missing a component of the um the pedestrian sidewalk on the southerntherly side of Seal Slooh Bridge. And so this project is looking to close that gap. We'll also be adding a new crosswalk on the south side of Norfolk, which is not currently present. And so we'll be adding that as well. We will also be doing additional pedestrian improvements along the corridor at just about every single intersection. This is what the pedestrian improvements are going to this is an example of what they'll look like. So, um new corner improvements including reduced radi um new uh ramps, things like that. Um and then we're also creating these protected intersections using these things. Some people call them footballs, some people call them biscuits. I think I had mentioned that. Um, and so what these do is create a protected space for bicyclists and pedestrians behind these spaces or behind these um, pieces of infrastructure and uh, give more safety benefits in that area. What these look like in practice again is for the vehicles to be able to approach the pedestrians or the bicyclists um, at more of a right angle so so that they can increase their visibility. This is an example of what those look like. And so what we made sure to accommodate throughout the entirety of the project was the appropriate truck

turning movements. Um but we we don't want our everyday vehicles to be making these maneuvers. And so um we're we're making this so that trucks can make these turns, but most folks will want to go all the way around these. And so um again trying to make sure we enhance those safety components. There are going to be some parking changes along the corridor. So to the extent we could restore or maintain parking, we were looking to do that as much as possible. Um that said, there's an existing 64 parking spaces between Pacific and Grant. Um and what we were able to do was refine the design. So we were only losing 16 of those spaces and that's in this area. Of the outreach that we've completed to date, we have not heard any feedback about the parking loss on this project. This is another location. Um this is just east of Seal Slooh Bridge where um again some additional parking loss will be. Um this area is historically underutilized parking. And so this um again we will see some reductions in parking here. Um and you can see there's currently coming back. There's currently parking on the north side and the south side of the roadway. And uh you can see where the new bike facilities are going to be placed and there will be some parking maintained on the north side. Um and again this is generally underutilized and here we're anticipating uh removing about 14 parking spaces. Diving into the safety component again this is something that you guys have seen before. There's been 80 collisions here just sort of in this picture from 2019 to 2025. Um a lot of the challenges lie with the gas station um at the southwest corner and a lot of the movements that are coming in and out of that area. And so at this location, 47 of those 80 were happening here at the gas station alone compared to 33 that were happening in the or in the actual intersection. And so this drove a lot of the need for safety improvements. This was a lot of the feedback that we heard

as well from the community that this was a particularly challenging location. And so that's one of the things that we were looking to address with the project. There's obviously other, you know, interesting things about this intersection between the the on-ramp and 19th Avenue, um, and how those movements get facilitated through the intersection. And so, diving into the intersection design. Um so coming back here, one of the things uh that we proposed that's one of the bigger safety improvements that we're proposing with this project is a new median to uh separate the gas station movement from the uh off-ramp traffic and uh so that's here in this area and we're doing that by uh widening the roadway in this area. So you can see in this area that this is the sort of widening uh alignment and then from here the new lane that's separated from the freeway traffic will have its own new signal uh phase. And so that's what you can see here with these yellow arrow arrows. As somebody approaches this area, they can come out on their own green light and make whatever maneuver they would like to through here. One of the other changes we're making to help optimize the signal because we're making these these changes that are going to extend the time a little bit is to remove the through lane or sorry, remove the through movement from this uh from this middle lane. So, this will be only a left turn lane. And you can see here that this is where the two-way two-way bike facility will be on the southerntherly side of the corridor. And again, because we'll have that median, there also will be additional protection because we won't have that um freeway traffic coming in and out of the gas station driveway. Some of the other feedback that we had heard from the community was adding or the request to add some additional warning signs. And so this is what we're looking at right now. Something along these lines uh to um warn drivers coming out of the gas station um that there are

uh bicyclists that might be coming through. There's additional connections uh south to the Delaware project. This is going to be facilitated through move removal of an existing median um that's here. So that's what's shown in red. So that's going to be uh reconstructed and will be minimized the size there. And then we're not facilitating actual new um connections to the north, but we are filling a gap with uh new sidewalk pieces widening that will help facilitate that connection in the future. And so coming back to this location, um a lot of folks have asked, well, how do I actually get into the driveway in the new configuration? So from there, when you're coming off the freeway anyway, you'll make a right turn onto Delaware. You'll make a right turn into the gas station. You'll come back out the sort of the same way, but now you'll have a new light uh to be able to get out. As a result of this change at this intersection, we are seeing that there is going to be an increase in the delay at this location. So again, this is a new uh signal phase, a new movement. Um and again, we're also going to have the new bike facilities coming through here. So we are seeing a 23 second increase in delay in the morning and about 12 seconds in the afternoon. Um and so while this is an exchange of safety benefits to additional delay so you know the the new bike facilities and all of that and the collision data that we were seeing um this is 45 seconds is about the city standard for delay and so we think that this is sort of within the acceptable realm of increase. Some of the additional feedback that we had heard was at the northbound ramps. So, there was concern about the bicyclists that were coming in westbound. And so, we've added in and sorry, the conflicts with both the um eastbound left turns and the westbound uh right turns. And so, we've added in new flashing beacon systems that will also have these signs on them um to help

the bicyclists or help warn um the motorists of the bicyclist presence. Moving on to the congestion relief part of the project. Again, another slide that you've you will have seen. We took a look at vehicle hours of delay. This was something that we measured with uh cell phone data essentially. So big data. It's all anonymized. And so what we were able to see um with this vehicle hours of delay metric is that in the westbound movement, it's about even throughout the entire um different peak hours of the day. However, in the eastbound movement, you can see that sort of gradual growth over time where in the afternoon, it's resulting in 32 hours of delay. And this is just sort of accumulation of the amount of time people are just waiting here trying to get through the corridor. And so when we took a look at that with our traffic analysis, we can see that the traffic backup is quite extensive. And with the proposed improvements that were uh that are being included on the project, we can see that that this is a representation of what that congestion will look like in the future. It's quite a bit reduced. Talking through really quickly about why this is happening. Um what we're seeing is that the different movements because of the single lane here are sort of blocking each other from being able to utilize the intersection optimally. So when you see a green light here for the through movement, you can see that the other through movement vehicles are blocked because of the left turning vehicles because of how short those storage um pockets are. And then similarly for the left turning vehicles, um the through movements will block those left turning vehicles. And so again, when the left turns have a green light, you can see that there's folks that are stacked up and just kind of stuck um and they can't make their maneuver. And so what happens because we have such a lengthy peak period during this on this corridor is over time those vehicles accumulate and they just

continue to not be able to get through the intersection. And so that's where when we're saying that the queue is about 3100 ft, we're seeing at the peak at the highest amount of time that it's accumulated over that time to be a quite long queue. And so we're making a number of changes at the corridor. The existing or at the intersection, the existing um turnpocket length is about 100 ft. Um and so what we're looking to do is extend that quite a bit. We're extending it to about 550 ft. And so we think that by adding this additional space, we will be able to um facilitate all of the demand that's coming through there much better than what's currently uh than the way that it currently does that. So again, we're seeing that long queuing right now. we're seeing a decrease down to about uh 300 feet of Q- length as opposed to the 3100 feet. And what that results in is really um a substantial decrease in travel times. And so in the morning we're seeing a 23% decrease in travel times in the eastbound direction, 48% decrease, which is a huge decrease in the afternoon peak period. That doesn't mean it doesn't come with some trade-offs. This was never intended to be a silver bullet type of improvement. we are seeing trade-offs in the westbound direction. Um, and so there are some nominal increases in the westbound direction. Um, and so you can see those here and in the morning about 11% increase and in the afternoon about 15% increase. So moving on to some of the other changes that are being proposed. So this is the two the two existing uh sorry the two proposed lanes. um in the eastbound direction. You can see on the bridge, we're re um reallocating the space on the bridge to be two eastbound lanes instead of the two westbound lanes. And then we're also adding an additional southbound left turn lane, which would get rid of one of the northbound through lanes, which again, those northbound through lanes, one of them drops just north of this intersection anyways. And

so we're using that space to help optimize the intersection. We're also adding in the existing the additional bike connection. So we're connecting up to the north to existing bike facilities on Norfolk connecting um again along Fashion Island which is really the you know the project and then connecting Southerntherly to also existing bike facilities through this intersection and then moving on to street lighting and landscaping. So one of the big questions or the ask that we had was overseal Slooh bridge. So right now there's no light no lights out there. Um and so we have been able to determine that we will be able to add in new fixtures along Seal Sloo Bridge. So that's something that we're excited to be able to add with the project. And then additionally throughout the entirety of the corridor, we'll be we will be upgrading the fixtures um to brighter fixtures just generally um with the existing street lights that are out there. for landscaping along the corridor. Um we are seeing that we are going to be because of some of the widening, we will be removing some existing street trees, but we will be able to re um to replant some. And this is the tree that's proposed in our street tree master plan. And so these are the ones that will be put out there. They're a little bit different than what's out there now. Um arguably nicer. And uh so there will also be some additional locations along the corridor where we are installing green infrastructure. And so this is sort of an an example of what green infrastructure looks like where you have the cutouts and you have um you know the ability to filter out the water that's coming through here. Um we'll be using different plantings than this but just to give you a sense of what green infrastructure looks like. So we'll have a a good handful of opportunities for that. Moving on to the funding, which again that was something that we're fairly excited about, very excited about. The project cost right now is running around $28 million. Um, so pretty hefty. Um,

and we're still working through the final estimates for this. And so right now we've gotten a good amount of outside funding. And so this is what, you know, this is sort of what I'm talking about. So we started off with $20,000 in SAM Tren funding. We also had an early grant for the project of $3.8 million of federal funding. So this is an OAG OAG funding and a federal earmark that we had. And so we've been able to leverage a lot of these funds for other funds. And so earlier this year, we uh were confirmed, the SMCTA confirmed that we got the highway grant that we applied for, which was $16.5 million. And so that puts us up to about $21.5 million. And then in addition to that, um the TA helped us secure an additional $3 million of RM3 funding. And so this is uh bridge funding for the um nine uh Bay Area County Bay Area uh funding source that was approved a handful of years ago. And so we'll be able to utilize a little bit of that funding for this project. And so to date, the city has committed $500,000 for this. So it's a huge deal for us to have been able to leverage this small amount of money of our own city funds to be able to secure funding for a $28 million project. So again, this is what we're looking at right now. We're still waiting for our final estimates. Um and again, we won't know pricing until we get our bids. Um but to date, we've committed $500,000 for this. And so this is a big deal for us for next steps. So again, coming back to this slide, um like I said, we're looking to complete the design in June. Uh we've been working with CALR for the last year or so to receive our CALR permit since a lot of this is in CALR rightway. So that's been a pretty lengthy process. One of the next milestones for us is rightway certification, which is just sort of a process that's needed for securing the federal funding uh for the next uh step. So, we're looking to request allocation for the federal funding in December. From there, moving into construction, we're hoping to bid the project in

spring, this coming up spring. So, we want to obviously get this bid as quickly as possible so that we can continue to move towards uh actual groundbreaking. We're anticipating coming back to you with an award next summer. Um, from there, because of the widenings that are needed with this project, we have to secure all of the signal equipment that's necessary for this because we're going to be taking out existing signals, we're going to need to install them pretty immediately. And so, because of that need, we'll need to procure this, but there's really long lead times for signal equipment, generally 6 to 10 months, depending on what we're talking about. And so there will be a process where we will be working on that procurement and then we're looking at potentially breaking ground after that procurement in winter of 2027 to spring of 2028. So as we get into construction, there's a handful of priorities that we have. One of the things that we were working through was trying to see if we can get Norfolk to be the um the first intersection that gets constructed. So, this will provide um one, it'll provide a lot of the congestion relief that has been asked for with the community, but I think it's also really important that we were focusing on that because we also want to be able to keep people flowing through the corridor when the most of the amount of construction is happening, which is going to be on the bike facilities really. Um that's where what's going to have the longest duration. And so, by starting with Norfolk, we'll be able to help people help people continue moving through the corridor um while the construction is going on. So generally our goal is to maintain access through the corridor at all times to the extent possible. We do anticipate that we're going to have to have some full closures of the corridor, but that all all of that work would be happening at nighttime. From there, um like I said, it would happen at night and then just generally we're trying to minimize vehicle delays. So that's one of the reasons why we wanted to try to focus on Norfolk first was to try to help minimize those delays to the extent possible. So again, we're looking on feedback uh looking for feedback on any of the overall design and anything else for us

to consider as we wrap up this uh design phase. And then if there's any feedback that um you have on the upcoming construction phase, that'd be great at Soul. Thank you very much. At this time, I'll open this item up for public comment. So if anyone in city hall would like to give a comment, you can give a slip to the city clerk. Zoom can raise your hand. in City Quirk. Do we have any comments?

Mayor Lraine, we have one request to speak in chambers and one request in our virtual environment. So, we'll set the timer at 3 minutes per speaker and we'll begin with Kevin Simpson. Thank you, council. It's a rare four bagger for me tonight. I get to talk to you four times. Um, it's also, you know, I acknowledge that it's a little bit weird for me to come and talk to you because earlier tonight I was told that I'm an outsider in my neighborhood, although I live on Humboldt, and that the bikes I see every hour and every day are uh mythical and that the two healthy trees in front of my house should be sacrificed for parking. So, take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt. Uh my feedback is wow this is one of the ugliest hairiest most fraught parts of our city and the improvements that are proposed here are magnificent and the fact that we've already found funding for them should make this a no-brainer. the thoughtfulness and design and engineering and problem solving of you know would defeat most people engineering students I imagine you sat down they would be like ah who gave me this dog um it's an amazing set of solutions that will do so much to ameliate a horrible situation that was doubtlessly created when 92 and 101 were put in and this little sort homely part of our neighborhood where unfortunately someone lost their life just in the last couple of years. Mark Kramer uh deserves the amount of attention that we're giving it and the improvements that we can make here. So, I strongly urge you

to approve this, continue to support this project, and the sooner we can break ground on these improvements, all of which will help so many elements of our city, uh, the better. So, thank you for a job well done, and let's keep this momentum going on this muchneeded project. Thank you.

Thank you. And our final speaker on this item will be Mike Swire. Mike, please go ahead and unmute your mic. Yeah, thank you uh Mayor Lorraine and members of council. Um Mike Swire speaking on my own behalf. Um I want to echo all of the eloquent comments from the previous speaker. Um I bike here regularly either going downtown or going to the east side and uh as Kevin said, this is a much needed project. I really appreciate the hard work that Bethany and her team um did put into this both uh in the design as well as in the outreach process. There were numerous points of input um and all those meetings were very well attended and um very positive. Um, I'm really glad that this project uh is priorit prioritizing resident safety over driver speed and over gas station access, which uh should not be a priority here. Um, I also want to thank Kevin Mullen, the TA, and all the other sponsors that put forward a quite a nice sum here. The fact that the I think we're getting $59 for every $1 that the city is spending on this is is really incredible. Um not sure if that math works but it's late at night. Um so nice work here. This is great leverage and um this is how we should do things. Um one suggestion I have for future meetings is that um you know that we did meet a lot on this. I think there were five or six meetings and it's very hard it's very difficult for people that attend the early meetings to understand the changes that happened and it seemed like every meeting there were changes occurring and um those aren't readily available to the public. So if there's some way to track changes going forward and reinform people so that they don't need to attend five meetings to understand what's happening. But um uh and then also I want to just reiterate we heard um I think Bethany mentioned that previous projects to reduce

congestion were met with frustration. Uh the moral of the story is and I've said this at several meetings. We can't reduce congestion. As soon as you make it easier to drive on one road people will take that road instead of another one. uh with modern GPS systems, you're automatically routed onto the path of least resistance. In the end, anything that we do to increase capacity on the road simply will force or encourage more people to go on those roads or more people to drive instead of bike and walk. So, I I just hope we don't make false promises in terms of the congestion angle. Um and finally I one thing process I would suggest that we do the public comment on these items after we hear council questions because I think it's really helpful for us to hear the full story before um we make our comments. But uh again a great project. Thank you Bethany and team and I hope this goes forward. Thank you.

Thank you Mayor Lorraine. That concludes public comment.

Excellent. Thank you for those comments. I will close public comment on the item. bring it back to the deis and see if anyone has any questions or comments. Council member Newsome. All in all, I think it's a great project. Um I've been supportive all along and I continue to support it. Um I am a little concerned or continue to be concerned about the collision data around the entrance to the gas station. Um, you said there was 47 in the last recording period or sorry, 33 in the last recording period, 47 in the period before that. Are all those collision data all car specific?

That's my understanding. Yeah.

So, this is a pie in the sky idea. I'll just start with that. Um there are between 800 and 900 residents in station park green. There is a passage project which be is being built sometime in the next decade which will house probably another 2,400. There's the site Marriott project which is another 585 and there's another 640 coming to Beayshore Commons. That all in all is over 4,000 residents that ride or could be riding along Concar. So what I'm wondering is is have we put any thought into having the bike lane go from Cal Trans Cal trains rather down Concar make a right onto Delaware. So it goes north south on Delaware and goes continues on makes a right onto Grant. I I I just I'm wondering why we're, you know, and again, this is we're a little far down the road, but I'm wondering what's the point of having that last 6th of 19th Avenue where there's really nothing there. I mean, it's there's the courtyard for AT&T and there's part of our courtyard. Really, that's all that's there. And I'm wondering why we're putting a bike lane in that little corridor where we could have it an eighth of a mile to the north and be having access for almost 4,000 future residents. And so I I again I'm not shooting the idea down, but I would like to make sure that we aren't looking at it we're doing it just because it's linear, right? And and that was one of the things um in the earlier sessions today when we were looking at the 101 project, it was very clear to me and it kind of did I had an aha moment of like it's not like this along the 101. It it zigs and zags and I'm wondering if if this isn't somewhere we should be zigging and zagging and and and another part to that and I know Mikewire says to

heck with with the gas station traffic, but the gas station traffic isn't going to go away. And so I'd be worried even with all the prevention and the tools that we put in place that we're going to have a pedestrian or a bicyclist get hit in that corridor at the entrance to the gas station. And so for those reasons, like I continue to support the project, but I would like to make sure that we aren't underwriting the idea of having the bike lanes come along Concar and then cross over on the Delaware Street. So, as far as the reroute to Concar, we did take a look at that, not necessarily as an alternative to this project, but we have looked at it because it has been asked before. Um, the reroute to Concar is not just a short reroute. It's um that block is quite a bit longer. The space like it's sort of a different shape of a lot and so it does add some additional time to that route. Um, and so as far as making these connections, while yes, I understand the additional residents, we are looking to implement new bike facilities on Concar as well to help facilitate those connections for those residents north of uh 92 to be able to get to the Cal Train station. This is the most direct access along Fashion Island Boulevard and the 50 plus thousand residents on the east side of 101. And so this is the most direct access for those folks to be able to get to the Cal Train station and then just back and forth destinations along the corridor um and then also provide the connectivity to the Delaware um corridor that that's in construction right now. So um I would say that that's part of the primary reason um reasons why we're making that connection. It's been a missing piece as you could see from the presentation. It's been a missing piece for a long time. Um, and so making that last piece connection, um, I think was just a really important part of this project. And it's also part of what our funding is contingent on.

Well, is connecting into to the tra the the train, but this would still be doing that. Yeah. But again, because it's more, you don't get the same kind of ridership. Um, we find that most people are using the route that's most direct um, to be able to get to their destination. And so the concar route tends to be a little bit more ciruitous. So do we have people riding bikes right now east to west to the CALR and they ride on 19th? I mean they can't because it's one d one way I guess but at le So yeah there's no data there because it's one way.

Yeah I mean we've heard a lot from students that are riding but not necessarily to Calrans at this point or Cal Train at this point but yeah folks are al are already using the corridor. Um, but yeah, no, they're not necessarily taking that route all the way to the train station at this point. And from a mileage distance, if you're riding your bike or walking, is it actually faster to walk south and come down 19th than it is to go down Concar right on Delaware? Yes. Okay.

And then regarding the gas station, I apologize. The question was about um access. I just it's it's not so much the access, it's the it's the points of conflict that that concern me. It you know, if if we've really seen that much collision data, uh what happens when we add 100 bicyclists riding down that bike lane a day? I I I'd like to think that, you know, signage is going to help, but but I'm concerned. I mean, honestly, I'm concerned.

Some of the other elements that we're looking at for that driveway specifically is some sort of activated warning system as well. So similar to the northbound ramps that we that I mentioned as well. So something along those lines that would be more than just signage. So something electronic that can detect the the bicyclists coming through that area and try to provide that kind of warning system for the people coming out of the gas station as well.

Yeah. I'm also a little concerned about the future northwest on Delaware Street because right now, you know, they're a lot of them are accessing through the off-ramp of 92. And when we take that away, I mean, already we see lines, especially on the weekends of people trying to enter from Delaware Street. And I think if you if you add if you double the amount of volume in there, I'm just wondering how far that's going to line up on Delaware Street, definitely through the intersection. And so I'm concerned about that too. I I don't know that we have any way have we done any data collection or put cameras out to kind of see what that looks like on weekends.

We do have data for the gas station. Yeah. And and that driveway uh was included in our traffic analysis. So we're familiar with the effects out there. Um we have been in conversation with the gas station itself to talk through what these changes look like. Um some of the changes that we will be making to help facilitate their access is um changing the width of the driveway to be able to accommodate the access into the gas station more easily because right now they've mentioned that because the Delaware uh driveway will become their primary driveway that between the fuel trucks that get parked there a few times a day and then the in-n-out access um that sometimes there's a challenge there with the number of people that are using that. And so we will be widening that with the project to help facilitate those turns a little bit more easily.

And do we have any concerns about the bicyclists heading north and north and south on Delaware Street? There's similar signage that will be included there. Okay. There's also, sorry if I may. Um going to be a outbound turn restriction. So it won't be a left turnout. A left turn out won't be allowed any longer. So out of the gas station on the Delaware side. Yeah. again to help facilitate um just maintaining additional safety benefits through there. Okay. At the end of the day, sound like I'm worried about the gas station. What I'm really worried about is the conflict between the pedestrians and the cyclists in that corridor. Um so that's it. I'm beyond that I continue to support this project. Thank you for answering my questions.

Thanks. Thank you, council member. Anyone else? Deputy Mayor Fernandez. through the mayor just before we go. We're looking at 11:30 if you want to extend the meeting. Yeah, I I was trying to see if we could maybe finish this so that Danielle could come back and we could do it as a group. I think we can do it. Okay. Uh just a very quick question for me. Super supportive. Thank you for the amazing work that you've done. You guys have integrated a lot of community feedback into this. Um, I'm just following up on on part of questions that I asked last time and kind of piggybacking on what council member Nuome said, have we talked to the owners of the gas station at Arco? We've had a number of meetings with them.

Okay. And where where are they on this? This is kind of this is really messing up their routing in and out. And so what's what's happening there?

Yeah, like I said, we've been talking to them about potential changes that they want to make sure are incorporated in the project. At the end of the day, we want to make sure that they have a viable business. We want to make sure that they can continue to operate their business there. And so, we've made a handful of changes to the project design to make sure that they can facilitate all of those, you know, the maneuverability of their tinker trucks obviously was a really important one. Um, the driveway widening that I had mentioned, that was another one that was key for them as well. So, we've had a lot of conversations with them talking through the different things that they saw were necessary for this. Thank you for that. I realize we don't have a lot of time. This is a really really great project uh that I, you know, is is unfortunately being heard at 11ish p.m. Um but and and so in as fast as I possibly can, I do just want to say this has become an amazing project. uh the multimodal impact obviously public safety. It increases access east to west to Hayward Park Cow Train. It sets a new high bar for outreach that I hope we continue to strive for going forward. Um early enough to give stakeholders, residents, businesses to give uh input that can lead to changes that show that we're listening and adapting to needs while maintaining the goals. very similar goals to what we heard in our special meeting today. Safety, connectivity, sustainability, and inclusivity. Amazing leverage of funding. Uh talk about bang for your buck. We plan to apply for one or two opportunities for initial design grant money. Uh as was discussed earlier in our special meeting, could Hillsdale be next for a project like this? That would be huge. Um, so I'm just very thankful, Bethany, to, you know, Kevin made a comment

earlier about um, the change we've seen over the years related to the ped mall. And to me, you know, I just want to highlight that we had a lot of folks giving comments about this project earlier. We got a lot of feedback integrated and tonight it's it's it's all support. Um, that is not an accident. That that took time and effort. Thank you very much. Um, with that, uh, it's anformational update and I thank you for the presentation and the item and we can bring Danielle back in and then we'll take a vote on extending the meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jay. Thank you, Matt.

Thanks for staying so late. Sorry. Have a good night. Let's go.

Nothing's changed. talking about the micro machine. You had the micro machine. Thank you.

What year is this? Okay, just really quick, we welcome back council members Gaditzki and uh back would uh like to ask the council for another brief extension of this meeting. Would anyone be willing to make a motion for 15 more minutes? Second. Thank you. City clerk. Sorry. Council member Newsome. Yes. Deputy Mayor Fernandez. Yes. Council member Diaz Nash. Yes. Council member Spurcoitzki. Mayor Lorraine. Yes. Motion carries 5-0.

Thank you. And now we will uh have item number 17 in your agenda. Charter amendments. Public hearing number two with a presentation from Pasana Rayha, our city attorney.

Uh, thank you, Mayor Lauren and members of the council. Uh, notwithstanding the name of the slide, this is actually public hearing number two, not number one. Um, this is the second of two required public hearings for a charter amendment. And I will be brief. Um, this presentation, by the way, is exactly the same as you heard uh during our last public hearing. Uh the first slide really reflects just a change uh to district elections. Also includes language uh stating that following each federal dennial census then um the council has to redraw boundaries. And then uh the proposed charter amendments would eliminate a provision that applied to council members uh elected in 2015 and 2017, but those terms are completed. So this language, which was required by SB415, uh is no longer needed uh for the the next couple slides deal with uh adding a little bit of flexibility to the charter. So, where a council member is absent from the city under the current language, uh the majority of the council has to approve an absence for more than 30 days. 30 days is a pretty short period of time. Uh and this would change that period to 60 days. Uh and then part uh this is part one of two slides regarding uh filling council vacancies. So, this adds more time to fill a vacancy. And because a vacancy often occurs or can occur, say in November, if a council member is elected to a different office, that means you only have 30 days to fill a vacancy during the holiday season. And having 60 days just allows for additional time to do more outreach, uh more time for interviews, then council action.

And then the second part of this change, the charter would eliminate language that's really no longer relevant since you have district elections. This this only comes into play where uh you have candidates running for one of several atlarge seats. Um and the language is no longer needed. Um this is a change to allow more flexibility for the time and day of council meetings to be specified by resolution instead of having uh I think overly specific language in the charter. Uh so if this language is like all of the provisions in this um presentation, if it's approved by the voters, then the council with respect to this change would need to adopt a resolution identifying the day of council meetings and the time that council meetings would begin. Uh briefly for emergency ordinances, this l this change would allow for the sum uh publication of the summary of an emergency ordinance instead of the full text and also the emergency ordinances would no longer automatically expire uh after 90 days since an emergency could last for that period of time. Um, and so this cleans up the language around uh emergency or urgency ordinances. This is pretty self-explanatory. Uh, this revises the language to specify with respect to the finance director that the finance director is not subject to approval by the city council and is simply appointed by the city manager is what would happen in practice as is the case today. uh the verified statement of candidates. It's a very lengthy section that originated from the 1922 charter that requires a lot of biographical

information to be submitted to the city. And this would simply eliminate that language since there's other uh avenues for candidates to get information out about themselves such as in the voter information guide uh for the selection of newspaper a newspaper publication of notices. this proposal would eliminate the language uh entirely because it requires a sealed bids uh when I think more practically speaking uh request for proposals is more appropriate for something like the selection of a newspaper for official public notices because in that way you can take into consideration other things like local circulation and then also I think a companion to this would be need to be an ordinance change and probably in our purchasing code specifying that selecting a newspaper would be done through as I said through an RFP process. Uh and then we are at uh the May 18th second public hearing. A change to the current schedule is that the submittal of the measure to the voters I think would occur on July 20th not June 15th as specified in the staff report. And the reason for that is so that um the council would take action on potentially two uh measures to submit to the voters and do it in the appropriate order. And that's the end of my presentation in 5 minutes and 23 seconds.

Thank you for this presentation. Uh I would like to open this up for public comment just in case. Uh, city clerk, do we have any public comment? No request to speak on this item. Okay, thank you. I will close public comment on this item. Bring it back to the deas. Any questions, comments? Council member Spear Gadiski. Um, thank you persona for that presentation. Just to clarify after this hearing, um, what are next steps? Right. So, what the next step would be would be the city council being presented uh with a resolution whereby the council could place this measure on the ballot and put it in front of the voters. So, then that would occur again on July 20th.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? I motion to proceed. Oh, well, there there's no action uh that I'm asking you to take. This is just a public hearing. It's required by state law for charter amendments. So great. I think the you could say the presentation presentation. You're very welcome. Thank you. Okay. Um, do we need Deputy Mayor Fernandez? I apologize. Do we need to do take an official action to move SP SP7? Are we moving the SP77 item? Yes.

City I I won't move back to my usual spot. Um, no, you don't need to take an action to uh bump that item to the next meeting. The city manager can simply do so. And I think it sounds like there's consensus from the council anyway. Cool. Beans. Thank you. Okay. Uh, may it be thus then. And that will bring us to reports and announcements and committee updates. Council members Kadiski.

Thank you through the mayor. I will be brief and quick. Um, three things. So, number one, May 25th, um we are holding a memorial service in Central Park and a letter writing event for um our military unit, Abu. Um so, please attend. That's from 10 to 12:00 p.m. in Central Park. Um, second thing, um, there was a resident today that came in and spoke about a potential idea on Humbult and I wanted to see if there would be interest in the council and in addition to exploring the oneway, also um, having staff go back and look at that option and come back in the fall and potentially present their findings on whether there's feasibility there. I I would ask uh staff for response first.

So I would say at this time I have to go back and look at the staffing resources because you have already given direction on what we are looking at. And so taking on a whole another it it would be a lot of staff time and work uh to do that. And so I would ask that you might want to hear about what um you have given direction on at that same meeting. you might want to say, "Hey, you want to pivot to, you know, look at look at another item, you know, look at another alternative, but that's your guys' prerogative. If you want to do this, I just got to put

I definitely want to explore the feasibility of one way, but you know, if new ideas are presented from the community, I think we need a mechanism to kind of examine feasibility there, too. But I understand what you're saying, and I'm okay with that." Could the I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, through the mayor. Yes, please. Um, uh, could we could we get a a request for an update at the next council meeting to assess whether you have the ability to do that? That's f I'm happy to provide just so we you know, I can go ahead and I can check in with staff um, overall and just let you know what it would take if we were going to look into it and how much it would cost in terms of staff time.

And also if residents want to lose the sidewalk potentially, right? That that's a whole another. So, so now we're going into a whole another project. So, so this is where I I'm just going to be very very clear like this council gave direction and so staff if we're going to start zigzagging staff is, you know, there could be a lot of frustration there too at the same time. And so we go off of the direction, happy to investigate if you want to. It's ultimately your guys's call, right? I just have to I'm happy to go back and ask and say how much would it take to get you at least an exploration of what this would be right in terms of staff time and money. I'm okay with um Deputy Mayor Fernandez compromised solution.

So I will then get you guys an update in a couple weeks. Is that okay? In a weekly update to let you know and then if you guys want, we can have another reports and announcements discussion. Um, and then just the last thing, um, during the meeting, I got a few text messages from residents that were stuck on the 101 due to CALR construction. If we could just follow up with them and CHP about um, you know, making sure residents don't have to wait for 2 hours at night um, to move 10 ft. Um, that would be great. I'm just curious like what that what's going on and how long um, that's going to take. So, I can ask staff we can inquire tomorrow um and talk to our contacts at district 4 who are overseeing the project and get an update and we can provide an update in a weekly update for you.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Fernandez. Uh just a an addendum to the phone calls that you were receiving from constituents. Um, I would also encourage those constituents who are stuck on the 101 um to reach to to our state legislators who can also reach out to CALR because it's really under the state jurisdiction, not the city jurisdiction. Yes.

Um, I just wanted to provide a very quick update and say that um I went to Kentucky last week with Martin and visited our Abu and and Ed, sorry Ed, you're the best. Um, I apologize and Mitch Spiegel. And, um, I just want to say what an amazing um, opportunity it was to meet the young men and women and non-binary people who are, uh, in the unit and are defending our freedoms every day. It was amazing and I am looking forward to increasing our relationship. they're actually going to be um dispatched to the border um in June. And so we're hoping that we can partner with the some of those uh folks to actually have them come visit San Mateo. And it's amazing. They have like a whole part of their barracks unit that's dedicated to the relationship of San Mateo. Um they have uh conference rooms that are named after local folks. It's it's it was really an amazing experience. Um uh also going to be very quick two um I was so we uh mayor uh Lorraine and I were part of a legislative committee meeting last week and uh things aren't looking great on the VLF front and so we were I was wondering if I would put forward after we spoke to our lobbyist um I was wondering if the council would be agreeable to was it sending a resolution to the state is that what we took away from that meeting

so the there's two kind of things going on. So I believe the resolution was going to be for the real property transfer tax to be against to have a basically opposition. Yeah. To the Harvard Jarvis action that's coming forth. That's what I heard from the committee. Yes. Would we be agreeable to to sending something that's against our art? I'm seeing a majority nodding heads so we can prepare that. And then do we also can I also petition for us to do something on V VLF as well or is that

so VLF we've we're in an active lawsuit and then also we have the mayor on behalf of the city has sent letters and we have met with our state legislator not okay we're solid. The other thing that I wanted to make sure that I brought up is that last year we had a really um I thought informative uh legislative briefing night where we had representatives or the uh people themselves, Senator Becker, Assembly Member Papin, and Supervisor Cororso uh to give us updates on the work that they're doing. And I we we have not scheduled one for this year. So I was hoping that with a show of nodding heads if we could um get one scheduled in September or October. So we'll get your date in the fall. How about that?

Cool. That works for me. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Diaz Nash.

Okay. Following up from all of the previous um announcements as council liaison to our adopted unit of Abu um it really recently came to my attention that a group of veterans is working to support a recommendation for the Presidential Medal of Freedom for Linda Patterson. As many in our community know, Miss Patterson has dedicated nearly seven decades to supporting deployed service members through letters, care packages, and acts of compassion inspired by the sacrifice of her brother during the Vietnam War. Alongside the support of the San Monteo community, her efforts have had a lasting impact on generations of soldiers serving overseas. Veterans for the 101st Airborne Division are now compiling personal letters and testimonials describing the meaningful role that Linda and the city of Sonteo played in supporting troops during deployments, including Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm. These stories reflect the tremendous morale and sense of connection that San Mato's outreach provided to service members serving far from home. With the support of my colleagues on the deis, I would respectfully request authorization for the city clerk to work with these veterans as appropriate in assisting with the preparation and coordination of letters of recommendation or support related to formally recognizing Miss Patterson's extraordinary service and contributions. I believe this represents a meaningful opportunity to honor a remarkable legacy of service, compassion, and community support that reflects tremendously well on the city of San Mo.

Yes, definitely. Can shouldn't we write one too as a council? Yes, certainly. Certainly. Yeah, absolutely. So, I think s city clerk, you have uh direction from the council. Thank you very much. And then I have one um very apppropo given tonight. I would like to request also support from my council to change our standard operating procedures so that rather than calling a timeout to go and have a biob breakak that uh council members can go when they need to go and then come back and Yes. continue.

Yeah. I I was just was that was that not possible before? We always used to like try to do a bio. You have your free will if you really need to get up and walk away. I think it's just to really keep everyone engaged. So like say if you have a development project to walk away in the middle of it, you might miss something like that. So if you pra p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p practice kind of discretion of just thoughtfulness of when you're going to get up and go, that probably would make sense because I know legally our our friend here will want to make sure that you guys are present, right? Then we have a during the item. Absolutely. So does that give us what we need? Okay, thank you.

I saw three nodding heads. Five. Okay, Council Member Nissan,

we've talked about all the events that I know of, but I did want to do a quick shout out. Uh, Rafat and the Jordanian community had a FIFA kickoff on Sunday and it was a popup for 1 hour and there was over 300 attendees dancing the Debka on the ped mall. It was quite incredible. But it also led me to ask a question of can we get an update on what and not now but if we can get an update uh at the end of the week from you Alex of what events that we'll be having in the in the area for the FE around the FIFA events. So if you read your weekly update from last week it's in there um we just gave a recent update overall and so we have now FIFA certification to go ahead and be able to show um the game. I believe that's on June 25th, USA. And then we're also going to be doing something for the other US match, I believe, on June

June 12th and June 12th and July 1. So there you go. So we'll we'll have all that information out there and we can share it further with all of you for sure. Amazing.

And also want to make sure we're welcoming all the countries that'll be coming uh into the games in Santa Clara. There's uh seven international teams in just round one alone. So, it's going to be very fun um to have all these different countries here staying in San Monteo. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Um I think I just I had one uh note. Well, I guess I have two quick notes. One, we've been interviewing applicants for our boards and commissions. Thank you to everyone who applied and I believe we still have some openings for applications. That's correct. We're still looking for uh personnel board and measure S oversight committee.

So I hope folks can consider going on our website and doing just that ASAP. Also, um, Council Member Nome and I attended, uh, a mayor's mental health initiative workshop a little while back, uh, with the county, and I found it, uh, poignant, and, uh, there were a couple of ideas for ways in which electeds could, uh, help in in normalizing thinking about balance, self-care, etc., taking care of one another. Um, one of the ideas was to have a a script as we leave right here, something like at this time of the meeting, um, that we could leave with. Uh, and I, uh, regrettably forgot to jot it down. Um, I'm going to just um try to paraphrase like an idea for tonight and then I might bring it back and and propose uh if if we feel like it might be a good idea to to just do. But the gist of it was um that regardless of what happens here tonight, you know, uh controversial topics, um differences of opinion, uh we leave as humans who deserve love and need care and uh can still care for one another as humans. uh off the deis. So um with that I would like to adjourn. Thank you.