City Council - Regular Meeting

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Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. 4 3ing. This is the April 16, 2026 regular meeting of the Brisbane City Council. Calling the meeting to order at 6:33 p.m. Would you please join me in the pledge of allegiance? I pledge algiance 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.

We have no members of the council attending remotely. So, city clerk, could we have a roll call, please? Council member Davis, here. Council member Kern, here. Council member Lent here, Council Member Okonnell here, and Mayor Mackin here. Thank you. Legal counsel, uh, could we please have a report out of close session? This will be for April 13th, April 16th, and the housing authority close session on April 16th.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. Michael Rous, legal counsel. uh on the close session concerning potential litigation on Monday the 13th. Council gave direction coming out of that close session. Uh on the uh council's agenda tonight in close session were two claims and those were rejected unanimously uh concerning the authority board. A meeting concerning real property negotiations. The board gave direction to staff. Thank you very much. Moving on to the adoption of the agenda. Can I get a first and second to adopt the agenda as it stands? I make a motion. Second. Okay, we have a first and second. All in favor? I. Anyone opposed? None.

Tonight, starting awards and presentations. We have a Peninsula Clean Energy West Light Energy presentation. Joining us this evening is Mark Hirschman, who's director of government affairs of Peninsula Clean Energy. Mark, thank you for joining us tonight.

My delight to be here, Madame Mayor. Good evening to you, to the council, to city staff, and the community. It's a pleasure to be in Brisbane on such a beautiful evening. I'm here to talk a little bit and update the council and the community on what Peninsula Clean Energy has been up to in Brisbane and throughout the uh peninsula and now in the central valley through our association with the uh city of Los. If I could move to the next slide, please. So just uh a little bit of level setting um for those in the community, I know the council is familiar, but those in the community who may not be familiar with who we are and what we do. Um we are the generator uh organization. We um do the generation of the energy uh that is used by 97% of peninsula residents um and businesses. Uh that means that we procure the energy through contracts or other means. Uh, and it still comes to consumers, to rateayers through the PG& wires and poles. And the bill is one bill for both services, including your gas bill. Uh, comes to you with a separate line for Peninsula Clean Energy. Um, but our rates uh have historically been lower than PG&Es. Um, currently we offer approximately a 10% discount for most rate payers. Uh, and uh, and that's uh, at least until the next uh, rate change uh, comes up. So uh uh I'll a little bit more about that. Next slide please. So we have actually been really active in Brisbane over the years. Uh this is our 10th anniversary year and that's one of the uh exciting things that brings me here this evening. But uh just to share a little bit of uh what Brisbane has enjoyed through its uh partnership with Peninsula Clean Energy and uh particularly want to recognize uh Mayor Macken who's our board member uh also a member of our executive committee and uh Council Member Kern who's the alternate

uh so appreciate their service and contributions to uh what we do. They're your representatives at our board meetings uh the fourth Thursday of every uh month except November and December when it's the third Thursday. We welcome the public and we are also cast online if somebody wishes to chime in there. But as I mentioned uh lower costs we know affordability is a key issue for Brisbane and uh the peninsula and so as mentioned we uh have had uh at a minimum 5 to 10% discount off the PG& rates. A little bit more on that uh in a moment. Uh we procure 100% clean energy. California doesn't consider uh large hydro renewable but uh we do have a lot of large hydro at this time. About 50 to 60% is however renewable. That's wind and solar uh in predominantly. Um we have a number of uh solar projects in uh association with Brisbane. I know the very first I think ribbon cutting we ever did on one of our government solar projects was at Mission Blue what three years ago and what a beautiful day that was. Uh and I understand that that's uh been improved with now uh 10 chargers at that site. Um we there's no upfront cost to the city for a project of that nature. Um we front the the bill and then we recoup it through the charges over the 20-year life of the contract. And we expect that uh at the end of that contract, Brisbane will have seen about a $350,000 projected savings for the solar projects. Um because the the costs stay steady and uh particularly as energy costs rise, uh uh you'll realize even greater savings, we hope. Um there's also been about $1.5 million in infrastructure investment. Uh and we're excited uh about the more recent uh uh solar installations at the uh community pool and the library as mentioned the

Mission Blue Center. We have 10 EV chargers we've helped to place at the park and ride and uh 12 EV chargers uh here at city hall. Next slide please. So, I mentioned the savings now for the third time. So, as uh not to be uh under understated, um the the savings on the bill for rateayers in Brisbane in the 10 years that Peninsula Clean Energy has been your energy generator is $4.1 million. Um that equates to roughly a week of free energy every year for every Peninsula Clean Energy rateayer for the 10 years. Um, in addition to that, we have uh over 735,000 in community reinvestment. Those are uh programs that we run uh for individuals for uh multi-unit developments and such. Uh it includes bill credits um a few years ago for all care and Farah customers. They received a $300 bill credit. Uh it includes credits on uh solar systems. So, uh if you have a solar system at your residence or business, uh we also provide a discount as to what you would get from uh the in um investor owned utility on that usage. Um we have customer rebates for installation of electron electric appliances, heat pump water heaters, uh heat pump HVACs and so on. And uh we have a an exciting program. It's zero interest loans. you can get up to $10,000 towards the installation of a electric appliance at uh interest free for five years and the charge shows up on your bill. So if you add all the Brisbane uh businesses and residents who have taken advantage of these programs, it equates to $735,000. Next slide, please. So uh founded 10 years ago but uh our

role has expanded and now we uh have gone from being the electricity provider to uh because I think we're especially because we are managed by a board of uh representatives from the 20 uh one jur 22 jurisdictions uh that comprise Peninsula Clean Energy. We're very sensitive to what your constituents are hearing and saying to you. And so we've uh been building long-term partnerships to help make uh customers help make uh investments in uh electrification and and in affordability uh for the uh the rateayers. Uh next slide, please. We missed one. There we go. So, uh, in the year ahead, we're looking forward in the rest of 2026 to the installation of six fleet EV charging ports at the Brisbane Corpyard. Uh, and forthcoming, uh, we're looking towards, uh, adding a battery to the Mission Blue, uh, to create resilience for that facility. Uh, we anticipate at least through the end of our fiscal year, uh, of continuing the 10% discount on uh, on rates. Again, that's a board decision. And uh to tease it a little bit, uh I I'm not at liberty to provide any details. Still in progress, but we're looking to uh a provide a new residential solar and storage program for uh for uh Peninsula Clean Energy customers. Next slide, please. And as was mentioned, uh we are changing our name uh effective uh in in a couple of months. Part of the process is we need uh every jurisdiction to amend its joint powers agreement with us uh to reflect the change in the name and that's on your consent calendar this evening. Uh nothing else changes. The name changes uh in part because

Peninsula Clean Energy is a little bit clunky. A lot of people have difficulty remembering it or or pronouncing it or or uh um otherwise confusing with PG&E. Yeah, you you are exactly right. Yes, there is that uh be the acronym became PCE and I can't tell you how many times I've heard somebody say PC and D. What

um and in addition, we added Lospanos in Merrced County to our um uh joint powers uh agency uh a few years ago. Um we have our largest uh solar installation just outside the city limits and uh and they uh tap into that uh and joined our our uh joint powers agency. So, for all those reasons, uh, the board determined that, uh, we would, uh, change the name, and the new name is West Light Energy. And so, uh, you may get constituent calls, uh, starting, uh, this summer when the change becomes official, uh, it'll start to show up on their bill as Westlight Energy, where Peninsula Clean Energy has been. Nothing else is changing. Um, except we are moving to a new location. uh we've outgrown our current uh headquarters and we are going to celebrate our 10th year. So those are exciting changes for for this year ahead. Uh next slide please. So our ask this evening uh is uh you have on your consent calendar the name change. If you have any questions about that I'm happy to comment at that time. Uh but we would appreciate the city's uh help uh as they've always been so helpful in communicating to your constituents, our our rateayers, uh the change. Uh if you get calls, uh please help us uh uh refer them to the right place so that they can be reassured that it's just a change of the name, not a new charge on their bill or something uh new that's been added to uh the mix. Um and uh we look forward to having you join us as we celebrate our 10th anniversary. uh more about that coming but uh we're we're uh making plans and uh and uh really uh celebrating success at this point. Uh next slide. I think that's and that's it. There's our team. So happy to take any questions you may have. I think my colleagues are used to my

gushing about PCE so I'm not going to ask anything. I'll leave it up to them. Um Madison, any comments, questions? Okay. Council of your service. Council member Davis as a former board member. Board member. Yes. Help get us started and uh appreciate that. Yeah. Council member Kern, thank you so much for coming tonight. We're looking forward to the exciting name change. Uh you mentioned that you've got a new uh solar and storage program uh upcoming and you can't talk about I understand it's secret. Can you reveal a year in which it's going to roll out? This year. Oh, it'll be we're hoping to roll it out before the end of the year. Fantastic. But the details uh I I could tell you about it, but it could be wrong. So, yeah, there's that, too. But very good. Thank you,

Council Member Lance. Yeah, thank you, Madam Mayor. So, um Mark, thank you for the presentation and um you know, nice to see you go from Senator uh Hill's uh office to PCE. It seems like it's been a great fit for you and I know you're really excited about doing this work. So, um I'm curious, um does PCE now, um Westside Energy, does it will it receive a profit at the end of that 20-year um contract with the city at Mission Blue or how does that work?

That's a really good question. I don't know what happens to we we do get back the money that we had invested upfront in the cost of the system. Um I I don't know that there's profit in that because you're seeing the benefit because we send we we have a rate at which the contract states you're paying for the energy and so if the energy costs if if it costs more at so we're recouping the cost of the system but the energy cost is dictated by other elements. So the difference between what you're paying and what you would pay if you had not put in the solar system is all your benefit.

Got it. So if if the cost per kilowatt hour goes doubles in the next 20 years, we don't see that because you're just saving that by not paying it for the energy, we just get back the the cost of the system. Um there's also provisions in the contracts about the if the city wanted to keep the panels and continue to use them at that point. um or uh as I understand it, the uh provider of the panels uh will take them back and and uh you know that's sure will want to keep them. So I there the way they're making them these days often times they're they're good for much more than 20 years. So awesome. Yeah, they continue.

And you talked about a battery. Yes. At Mission Blue. Okay. So what what would be the size of it? And then so and then how would that stored energy be then put into the system? I'm going to have to defer that for a a a different response or a later response. I I do not know the the answer to that. I don't know if somebody from public works is available who is familiar with the details. No, I'll have to

I would just say that they were looking at at adequate size based upon the solar system that's there. So it would be a community backup in an emergency. It would also avail the city of having um a massing place in case of a major outage like an earthquake, a major event where there would be one designated place that would still have power going power. So it and they've been working on right sizing because we have problems getting the battery. So I I don't know that the I don't know that the contract has or has not been signed yet, but but I know it's being worked on, right? Yeah.

And I would just add when you asked about profits, it's not an investor owned utility. So PCE doesn't talk about profits. Profits are are in excess and they're all invested back into programs which go right back into the the um customers. Yeah. Yeah. When I think of profit, I think of money going back to West Light and that that can then be used for other projects in other cities. So um Yeah. And then just one last thing. Um, so you you talked about the other counties, but you didn't mention Santa Clara County, which is right next to us. So, do they have their own? So, uh, many of the communities in Santa Clara County are are served by Silicon Valley Clean Energy.

Okay. Um, PaloAlto is a municipal uh, utility. So the and Santa Clara. So those those cities are not part of that. But I I can't speak for exactly uh the jurisdiction, but uh Silicon Valley clean energy and San Jose also has a uh San Jose clean energy uh separate entity. All right. Yeah. And that's a a department of the city in San Jose. All right. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, sure. Thank you, Council Member O'Connell. No questions, but thank you for the presentation. Thank you,

Mark. Thank you very much. Very exciting news. Peninsula Clean Energy soon West Light continues to grow and I will be so thrilled to not have to correct everyone on we are not Pacific Gas and Electric. It's a great move and it's a 10-year anniversary. So, it's a step in the right direction. We so appreciate your contributions on our board and our executive committee and uh it's a delight to be here this evening. All my pleasure and thank you for your service. You do so much for the organization and thank you for joining us tonight. My pleasure. Thank you. All right, we go on to oral communications. This is the first oral communications and I have to read the caveat.

We welcome speakers providing public comment, but please be advised this is a limited public forum. It's therefore important for speakers to stay on topic whether speaking to a particular agenda item or speaking during general public comment. On topic matters are those that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city. Speakers, whether during oral communications or on agenda items, will have three minutes. Following these rules helps ensure the city council can get to all the items on the agenda, including hearing public comment on the items. If a speaker fails to follow these rules, they're disrupting the meeting and they will be warned. If a speaker continues to ignore the rules or is otherwise disruptive, their opportunity to speak will be ended and they may be precluded from speaking on any other items tonight. That being said, is there any member of the public wishing to make a public comment on an item that is not on tonight's agenda? City clerk, anyone online?

No hands, Madame Mayor. Anyone in the audience? Seeing no hands, we're going to move on. Consent calendar. Can I get a first and second to approve consent calendar item C through H? So moved. Second. We have a first and second. All in favor? I. Anyone opposed? No. New business tonight. We have item I, considering approval of legal services agreement with Burke, Williams, and Sorenson, and the appointment of Samantha Zutler as city attorney, who I see in the audience. May I have a staff report, please? And welcome, Samantha.

Sure. I'm going to give a very brief staff report because I think that the agreement speaks for itself. But tonight uh in front of the council is as um the madame mayor described a legal services agreement with Burke Williamson Sorenson uh for the services of Samantha Zutler. Uh Samantha's also joined by her husband Chief Mark Laoren. So hello and welcome tonight. Um it's pretty straightforward um contract um that was negotiated by a subcommittee worked with um on by Michael Roush and and Tom Mcmore as well. Um really just wanted to tee it up for any questions that you may have. Um Samantha is just going to wave at us tonight. Uh she has no presentation. Um Michael's here to answer any questions you might have. Thank you.

Okay, let's start with Council Member O'Connell. Any questions? No questions. Council member Kern? No questions. Mayor Pro Tim Davis, no questions. and council member Lince. Uh, you know, I just have one question, Madame Mayor, and that's um, so there will be a monthly Oh, I guess I should direct this to you, Michael. Sorry. So, there'll be a monthly uh, statement of hours that have been logged with uh, description of how those uh, hours were build. That is correct. the agreement provides that uh there'll be a detailed listing of the uh of the time spent and what those hours were spent on.

Okay, great. And then this is probably a question for you uh Jeremy. So then those hours u are submitted and then they're evaluated I guess by you and finance director and then it's paid. Christina Christina, your assistant city manager looks at this. Okay, great. Great. And then um will the council also get uh a report of that? So I see shaking the head. Okay. Fantastic. All right. Thank you. Okay. Um do we have any I I don't think we have questions from the public on this. Any further council discussion? Seeing none. Okay. Oh, I I have something.

Oh, I just want I just want to say I just want to thank our um legal subcommittee uh search team here. Uh Council Member Lens, Council Member Okonnell, uh you guys put in a ton of work on the RFP, sorting through um you know, responses and teeing this up for the rest of the council to go through and do the evaluation and the interview. So, I just want to thank you guys. I know it's a lot. I was echo that. Mhm. Did you have uh something else you wanted to say, Councilman? Oh, I'm good. No, I I just uh do we need to do public comment on this? No. Uh I informed the mayor there was no there was no public comment at this time.

Thank you. Right. Okay. So, um, we'll need a a motion and a second to approve the legal services agreement with Burke Williams and Sor and appointing Samantha Zutler as the Brisbane city attorney with appointment to begin April 16, 2026, which is tonight. Could I have a first and second, please? Happy to make that motion. Second. All in favor? I. Anyone opposed? No. Motion is carried. Welcome, Samantha. We're pleased to have you on board.

Madame Mayor, before we move to the the the next topic, um it's worth sharing that this is a bittersweet moment, too. As excited as we are for having Sam come on board, it means we're saying goodbye to uh two gentlemen who have aly served the city for many many years. Tom's not with us tonight. Tom will continue to to support us in some capacity related to some of the projects that are going on. But uh this is it for Michael. And Michael put on a tie for us tonight and everything. Oh my goodness. I didn't put my tie on tonight. Michael, on behalf of the staff, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure serving with you. We're going to miss you a lot, buddy.

Thank you very much. Uh uh there will be a few items that I'll still have involvement in, but uh certainly uh the transition to uh to Sam and her team. I'm looking forward to it. I I knew you'd have trouble leaving. Yeah, it has been a while. You know, it has. This man has tried to retire so many times. Still a long stretch, but yeah. No, it's been great having you on board, Michael. And um you you've served the city, you know, admirably and um you've helped me out a lot uh with some of the legal, you know, issues that, you know, council members try and figure out. So, thank you for your service. Thank you, Michael. You're welcome. Thank you, Michael. And sitting to Tom, right, and sitting through all those those planning commission meetings and everything else.

So, yeah. and and welcome aboard, Sam. Excited to have you join our team and looking forward to the first meeting on Is Yeah. May No, no, May 7th. May 7th. May 7th. Okay, there you go. May 7th. First meeting in May. Here. Yes. Yes. All right. Hard to see you go, Michael. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Don't be scarce. You're always welcome. All right. Next item on our agenda, item J. Do you want Sorry. Did Sam want to say a couple words? Oh, Sam, did you want to say a couple words?

Oh, good. That's right. What What attorney doesn't want to say a couple words? Okay. I really did not want to say a couple words. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to working with you. I've had some uh communication with your staff so far. Hi. And I it's everyone has been great. It's been a real pleasure. and I've been a city attorney for a while and I uh feel really fortunate to practice in this area of law. I really believe in cities. So, thanks so much for having me and I and all of my team are really happy to be working with you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Item J, we move on to open space and ecology 2025 accomplishments and the 2026 work plan. Staff report, please. I see Molly.

Good evening, council. Nice to see you all. Molly Brown, management analyst in the city manager's office. I serve as staff liaison to our open space and ecology committee. And I'm here just to introduce tonight Anthony Walker, our chair, and Mary Rogers, our vice chair. They'll be walking you through a presentation of our uh the committee's 2025 accomplishments and 2026 work plan. Thank you so much. Take it away. We're double teaming teaming on this.

Yeah, greetings everyone. Good evening. We Yeah, we figured we'd do uh couple of slides each and um try to get you through it as quickly as possible. So, um we indeed are uh Anthony Walker and Mary Rogers, chair and vice chair of the open space and ecology committee. And uh we're going to take you through um generally 06 Purpose. I know you're familiar, but um and uh our 2025 accomplishments and uh vision for future work in 2026 and beyond. Um so, next slide, please. And I got Mary's up. It's my turn. So, good evening. Thanks for having us and allowing us to toot our horn and provide our kudos. Um and it just doesn't take the OSAC committee. We have an outstanding staff and I think everybody deserves a shout out here so if you don't mind. Um our staff uh support includes Dolores Dea Cruz, Adrienne Athetherton, Molly Brown, and Christina Fernandez. The committee members Anthony you know you know me but there's also Aaron Becker, Rohendra Adapatu, Jason Nunan and Michelle Salmon. And we have one open seat. So, it takes it does take a village. Um, OEC does a lot of we have a lot of projects on our plate.

Um, but we're mainly here to support the city and advise on open space planning. We address ecological issues. Um, and also review city practices and programs related to natural resource conservation. Um, next slide, please. So, we're year round. We have activities going on pretty much every month. One of the biggest um activity we um were very successful with in 2025 was habitat restoration day. Um multiple we had a winter planting day, we had Earth Day habitat restoration, frog habitat restoration, which was a big deal and I have to give kudos to Paul Buscow on that. um coastal cleanup day at the marina and um first our first ever volunteer restoration effort in Baylands was Ice House Hill restoration day that in December and that was successful and I just want to say that it just it's just not Brisbane community involved in all of these activities. We get a lot of people from other communities coming in to help us and that's really important. It just kind of solidifies who we are as a group and I hope to see more of that.

Um, and now it's Anony's turn to take you away. Thank you.

All right. And, uh, so additional compliment or accomplishments in 2025. Um we completed review of um and provided comments on the um bailands uh draft environmental report. That was a big one. Um the quarry draft environmental report. Um the draft specific plan and the open space element. Um so we had a yeah a lot of lot of paperwork uh shuffling this past year. Um we also completed a tree inventory um done by Planet Geo um and a tree hub site uh created by GIS manager Bob Sage um and that informed our uh decision of a tree canopy goal of uh 23% additional um and uh we contributed to the priority convers uh conservation area PCA grant application um created for educational library um displays. Um this year uh last year we were centered on uh climate change, litter, uh frogs and native plants. Um and uh members contributed um blast and star articles on fire resiliency um home electrification and invasive species. Um so we had some great outreach there. Um we also added a new uh species to the invasive species list um which was the tree of heaven. uh don't let the name fool you. Um um and uh continued fostering positive working relationships with local organizations, San Bruno Mountain Watch, um Mission Blue Nursery, and uh South San Francisco Scavenger. Um and uh supported the Brisbane um building efficiency program um with 99%

compliance in 2025. So that's great. Uh and um can I get the next slide? So yeah, 2026 and beyond. So looking ahead um into 2026 and beyond um in addition to uh tending to our routine and ongoing efforts um the priority projects we're focused on this year um are supporting the health and growth of the urban tree canopy um utilizing utilizing our uh the tree inventory I mentioned earlier. Um we we'll be wrapping up that work soon and there should be more coming to council uh pretty shortly here. Um we are also looking at um updating our climate action plan. Um it's just about time for another look there. And um providing input on uh Cororey and U bailance developments as needed. Um so um that's that's pretty much it. I'll wrap there. Um turn it back to you and um thank you very much for your attention and uh happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you Mary and thank you Anthony. And I hope we never see anything added as new invasive species to your list. Would be a positive move. Um, and I I just want to thank you. I mean, the things that you do, I've always been a big fan of OEC and um, boy, the tree canopy is something that restoration is something I'm really looking forward to because we've lost so many trees. But that being said, we may have some council member questions. Let's start with council member uh Lent.

Well, first of all, I just want to thank you Anthony, Mary, and the little person over there. How you doing, Michelle? um and the other members, you know, for volunteering your time and taking your passion and applying it to to creating helping us to create policy that makes a difference, not only in Brisbane, but in the region and really around the world. I mean, the best um best efforts that you can make are the ones that are done locally. And so, um just yeah, huge kudos to to you. And then and I'm glad that you recognize staff because sometimes we don't do that. And I'm glad that you mentioned, you know, everyone who's a part of of the staff that that helps you get the things that that you need to do the work that that you want to uh succeed in. So that's fantastic. The only question I have when I was looking at this thing here was, you know, it says, you know, updating the climate action plan and it said to reduce emissions from existing buildings in transportation. And I hope that, you know, we're going to be dealing with the bayance and the quarry, you know, coming up very very soon. And so, you know, just be thinking about, you know, new new development because, uh, when it talks about the Corey and the Bayance development, it it it focuses mostly on open space and there's a lot more work that that you guys can do to help us, you know, in regards to um reducing our our carbon footprint. So, thank you for all your contributions and really appreciate the work that all of you do on our behalf. So, thanks.

Absolutely. Thank you very much. It's It's our pleasure. Mayor Prom Davis, no questions for me. Okay. Council member Okonnell.

Well, thank you so much for all the work you and the committee in whole does along with staff. Um, we had the pleasure with council member Lent to um on the subcommittee level to review your plan and wholeheartedly engage with you and I think we might have added some things to it that maybe are aspirational as is so much of the work that you do, but thank you so much for being aspirational for us. Thank you, Council Member Kern.

Uh, thank you guys for coming tonight and sharing your plan and your accomplishments. Um, I want to thank all the volunteers. Volunteers are what keep all this going forward. So, thank you all. Um, your work uh reviewing the environmental impact report. It's those are not for the faint of heart. Those are some serious reports and we really appreciate you taking them seriously and providing all the feedback that you do. So, thank you for that heavy heavy lift. Um, city manager Dennis is probably over me asking about the tree canopy, but it's one of my favorite things to think about in Brisbane. Um, and so Adrian took me through the software and I really nerded out on it and I just want to I want to thank you guys for that effort. I'm super excited to see what comes out of that. So just again, thank you so much for everything. Thank you.

And I can't let you get away without asking. I noticed you've got two new ad hoc subcommittees, dark skies and invasive species. We have a dark skies ordinance which is a big deal that that we managed to get that through in the peninsula. A lot of other communities don't have it. And again, I'm seeing invasive species. What do you foresee as as more imminent projects for dark skies and invasive species? And what was behind forming these two ad hoc committees? Yeah. Well, I I I think with both of those um they're fairly new endeavors as far as the

rest of the public is concerned. And so I think a lot of it um was, you know, intended to go into outreach and thinking through, you know, how do we message this? How do we make sure that everyone is aware of it and and maintain going forward? um you know it's one thing to make up set of rules and it's another thing to expect people to do anything about it right so yeah I I would just encourage your subcommittee dark skies um I hear from a lot of residents about in fact they'll send me photographs of different homes

all over on the hills not just on the hills with just those massive spotlights LED that are just so invasive of shining in other people's homes. They don't realize it could be way up on top of a hill and it's affecting somebody all the way across town because it's aimed that direction. I don't know why that happens. Oh, Mary, can you come to the

We'll likely take advantage of the subcommittee educational outreach to address um the invasive species and dark skies and just keep getting the word out there to residents about our dark skies ordinance and what they can do. Um there is a a dear neighbor letter that's um at the library people can utilize. It's anonymous. You could just send it to your neighbor and you know ask them to tone down the lights. And I think people have done that and it's been successful. I know it was done at um oh heirloom. I think we brought that up um at our committee and someone actually sent a note down to them and they actually tone down the lights so they're not as bright coming up visitation. So, we're getting there. I think it's just a matter of us taking um just educating the public and just keep reminding them that there is something you can do. So, I mean even I have a couple of friends that even um said, "Hey, listen. I'll buy you some new light bulbs or I'll buy you a new light if you know if it's that bothersome.

So there there are ways around it. So it's just a matter of educa educating everyone. So that would be great. If we could see you at the community festival with some things on lighting would be really helpful.

Yes. Yes. Thank you. And and I would just again thank you also that your appetite for taking on writing the comments on all these different plans the deer that is massive amount of work. I I've been there done that it's hours and hours. It's tough. It's grueling and so your fortitude in sticking through that is really appreciated. It's no small feat and I hope you have appetite to take on more. Little incentive, little encouragement there, but Little longer next time. Little longer. Yes. Yes. Yes. Appreciate it. Thank you so much, General. Do we have any members of the public u wishing to make comments? No, Madame Mayor.

No. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for all you do. All right. Our next item tonight is item K. Consider adoption of fiscal year 2026 27 council priorities. Could we have staff report, please?

Yes, madam mayor, members of the council, thank you. Um, as the council knows, a few weeks ago, you held a session at the double tree to discuss the 2627 council priorities. Very productive conversation. Uh, as a result of that discussion, staff prepared the the report in front of you to memorialize the five priorities that uh we believe we heard. Um, and we're here tonight in order to get any edits or corrections to our work. As you'll see on page 44 of the staff report, uh we list about mid uh mid of the document, the five priorities that we understood. Implementation of the city's affordable housing strategic plan, repair updated mission blue and activation of the community center, examining the future of the city's retail corridor that consists of the businesses along Old County Road and the visitation avenue. and then continuing the two priorities that um two of the priorities that you had from last year related to the city's fiscal health and maintenance of our city facilities. So, we're here tonight uh to ask for adoption of those priorities so we can ensure that our work aligns with the council's desires. Thank you.

Okay, council member questions. Let's start with council member Kern. No questions at this time. Okay, Council Member uh let's go. Council member Okonnell, I'll echo Frank. No questions at this time. Okay. Council member Lens did a Mayor Prom Davis. No questions. Okay. I have no questions as well. Uh council discussion. Who would like to start? Let's ask for a volunteer. Madame Mayor, there's no I also wanted to note there's no public comment. Okay. Thank you. Sorry about that.

Mayor Prom Davis, would you like to start? Sure. You look ready. Sure. I'll be quick. I I mean, I felt that we discussed this extensively at our workshop. I think this is a good, you know, um, summation of what came out of that session. And so, I'm happy to move forward. And that's all I have. Okay. And thank you to staff for putting this all together like this. Okay, Council Member Lent.

I feel the same way as Mayor Prom Davis. It seems to be uh what we talked about and I think if we were able to accomplish these goals uh this year, that would be quite an amazing feat. Yeah. All right, Council Member Okonnell. I would just like to add that while the repair and update of Mission Blue and activation um I I just noticed that I misread part of this um and it does say the community center, so the old library um are important, but I do think that they need to be done judiciously. Okay, Council Member Kern,

thank you. Uh just want to thank uh staff, especially Jeremy, because I did reach out to him um indicating that I really wanted to have uh the full list memorialized and I'm glad it's part of this report. Um as we discussed in our priority session on this secondary list, so we've got our five priorities for this year. On this secondary list, we've got some real sleeping giants that need to be dealt with at some point. So I just want to make sure that this is never lost and we can revisit this on the go forward. So but thank you. Good job. Okay.

Yeah. I I have no questions. My comment is I appreciate memorializing all these different items that we talked about and um I hope members of the public can embrace that at least they know the council's aware of a lot of things that need to be done, but we had to distill the list down to what we thought was doable or the most immediate need this year that we could accomplish. And that doesn't mean we lose sight of everything else on the list, but um sometimes you you have to make the hard choices and those were the things that we felt could be accomplished. So, thank you to staff for putting that together.

You're welcome, Madam Mayor. If I could echo your comments and just expand on them briefly. This list is is a reference point for us. Uh we depending on capacity, depending on what issues do come up, it is inevitable that we will work on items on this secondary list. um including just having sessions with the council to decide how we move forward on certain things that are big like the marina and other subjects. So, thank you. I I would just add sometimes things that are on the list that didn't make the the top five are being worked on by council subcommittees along with staff for future and they are long-term. So, do we have any members of the public wishing to make comments? No.

No, Madame Mayor. Oh, we have one public comment.

I'm sorry I didn't get to review the list, your list before the meeting, but I do think it's really really important that um the community center, you know, library community center, the building that we get it fixed as soon as possible because the more it deteriorates, the less able we're going to be able to fix it. So, I hope it's high on the list because it is an extremely valuable resource. It's one of the few spring-loaded dance floors. It's used a lot. I hope it's used more once it gets fixed up nicer. So, I I just think it's a really important space. It was hard one when we built it. And I'd hate to see it go to rack and ruin because we didn't fix the roof. Thank you.

That's why it made the top five. I can assure you that was a a ve very large concern we had. All right. Uh, any other comments from the council? No. That being said, then, um, can I get a first and second to adopt and approve fiscal year 2627 city council priorities as we just discussed? So moved. Second. All in favor? I opposed. None. Okay. Can I ask a question? Um, is it too late?

Well, we're kind of past it now. Okay. Thank you. Item L, review business license fee proposal. Could we have a staff report, please? Good evening, Madam Mayor. I don't think your mic. We're having trouble here. I have to turn it on. That's right. Thank you.

Uh good evening, Madame Mayor, Mayor Prom, and council members. Uh we're happy to bring forward tonight an overview of the business license tax study and the recommended model put forth uh by the fiscal policy subcommittee. Uh we do have a slide deck. So I'm going to ask them to just put in the and uh while they're doing that I wanted to give some thank yous um shout outs. Eric Meyers from HDL and his team um put forth quite a thorough product for our review. Um and so we definitely want to thank them. Want to thank Mitch Bull, our economic vitality director who co-led this initiative and his familiarity with our business community as well as other local communities and um state um business u community was invaluable to this process. and of course the fiscal policy subcommittee who provided a thorough review and dialogue on the topic um which um you're going to see and the recommendation they came through with tonight. So, um, if you will recall, during the review of the budget for fiscal year 2425, council directed staff to review the existing business license tax program to determine if our methodologies were assessing fees upon the various businesses within Brisbane um, in a most relevant and best practice uh, process and methodologies. So uh with that I just wanted to go through a few of the things that uh just highlighting what the business license tax is. So if we can move to the next slide. Five five components of a business license tax is the activity of the business which is considered uh the taxable activity. the measure of the taxable activity which u many measurements

um we use are headcount different types of gross receipts those are the the most common that we're using and a few flat type of tax rates so again the third is the rate classification depending on what type of business it is and then finally the results so the combination of those items um create this business license tax program and it is a tax. So it is uh something that we cannot change without the um with the say of the voters. Okay. So moving on to um some of the areas that HDL was uh available to help us with with the study. Um they were engaged to analyze our current portfolio. What is our current tax registry? um as part of that and they were looking at the the results of our current um portfolio over the last four years. U I do want to state that HDL took over uh the business license tax administration for us in the year fiscal 2324. Um Avenue was was doing it uh starting 2017 until that time. And so HDL has been um assisting us as a partner for the last few years. And so again, it made sense that as they are working with us with our existing pro program that they would be a a good um partner to perform this tax study. So they were looking at our current portfolio and then they were also engaged to do a fee analysis and comparative study uh against other agencies. We selected uh nine including um there's a deep dive into Emeryville, San

Bruno and South San Francisco who are most local in similar sizes. And then finally they were tasked to based off of what they were finding and some of the uh comparatives that they had was provide several models for us to to review. So on this what you'll see on the slide is our current um process that showing that the revenue from our existing portfolio has been pretty static for the last several years. If you look at the dotted line, um it represents the base business without capital improvement factor. So it's relatively flat, uh reaching just shy of $300,000 annually. Moving to the next slide. Um you'll see that the way our program is currently we have we have about 18 different categories of how we can calculate uh the business license tax. So out of appro just shy of about a thousand businesses, we have a variety of of ways that they uh have to fill out applications and calculate uh based off of the rate schedules. And even with that, um if you go to the you can visually see that the majority of them their primary tax type is gross receipts, but there are others you'll see again flat fee amounts. Some are based off of headcount and and then it just adds a complexity to how the reviews have to be handled. So if you go to the next slide for the top 100 businesses which make up about 95% of the portfolio, it's pretty much all gross receipts. That's how they're reporting and

calculating their business license taxes. And again from the top 100 um the percent of the total taxes charged is about 90%. And so that very topheavy u for that the top 100. So the majority are reporting based on gross receipts um on the left and then on the right just making up 90% of the revenue. So moving to the next slide, it this is a list of us compared to the the various um comparatives that we had selected. Um I want to highlight like towards the middle where you see Brisbane where our the last time our ordinance was modified was 1983. That's not a typo. So I just wanted to note that. Um, but we're, if you look at us as revenue per capita, we're pretty much right in the middle of this comparative. So, obviously every every city has a different type of uh business community um targeting different things, but so that we just wanted to for for you to see where we're landing u when we do compare ourselves to these other communities and agencies. Okay. So with that, um, HDL and staff met with the fiscal policy subcommittee on March 30, uh, 26, so just a few weeks ago, to review the results of the study and the proposed models. Um, the models we're going to summarize in the next few slides, but part of the staff report, there was a more detailed grid for your review on the differences between the various models. So moving to let's see all I I do want to highlight before we move on sorry uh all models um would we would continue to have the

gross receipts continue to have headcount as a pos as a possible uh rate methodology. Um but then we would also be adding a cost of operations. There are certain types of businesses that don't really sell product. Um and so you're looking at either early phase type of startups, research and development laboratories, those types of businesses. We needed to determine um what's makes most sense and what's the best practice that we see other agencies um charging or or using. And so, uh, cost of operations is a is a way to protect ourselves for, um, obtaining and reviewing the different types of businesses in different mixes that either are here now or can come in the future. Um, another two other things that we will be m maintaining throughout all of these models, not forprofits will still um have their fees waved and then the capital improvement taxes for 10 million and over will still be uh part of the model, but also the sales tax offset will still be part of the model. So, we're not doing away with that. We do not want to um tax our business community um consider like a double tax. So currently we do um use their sales tax as an offset for the the higher um earning businesses. Okay. So going through the models. Thank you Angel. And I apologize uh there is a I missed one slide. So just basically model one was no change to the structure. It was basically just increasing rates. We we looked at two two scenarios of increasing the rates as is uh one was by 20% the other by 40 but there was no

change. Um so moving on to model two, it's um it is a change in the structure where there's a flat base uh for all and it it goes up to a certain dollar amount and then from there it's a rate per thousand um of revenue or or cost and um so that allows some flexibility between sizes. It considers that not all businesses are created equal. So, and especially it encourages that if you are a smaller uh business that you're you're going to be participating um but not until you get to a certain threshold will you have to be given a higher rate of of tax charge. Um one of the there there are pros and cons for both. So for in one of the areas that we reviewed as as far as a um not a necessarily a negative but just to consider that by doing this model doesn't adjust for business type or other local tax contributions. Okay. So moving on to model three. Um this was a a different type of um it it also had a flat rate tax and it also had um after on top of the flat rate where it was a a variable um component uh charge based off of the next you know certain threshold. However, it added categories. So instead of the 18 that we saw before, it narrowed down the categories down to five. um and plus the exempt category. And so with with this model, with each category, it we were seeing that we could also consider charging um instead of uh one flat rate per $1,000, you can

play with the different um rates there determining depending on the types of business and and and how those business can conduct themselves um in operations. Um so based off of that the committee decided that um they recommended that the council move forward with model two. So, moving to the second or the next the next slide, the second uh I'm sorry, the the subcommittee has decided and is recommending we move forward with this rate um because or this model because it simplifies the current rate structure where you're down to one. You get one flat rate plus the the dollar per thousand of gross receipts. Um it raises fees all across. However, um it does consider the different sizes of businesses. So, it would encourage microenterprises to hold to to consider Brisbane their their home. Um and it would increase revenues not only from our current mix, but would also protect us in the future if the business mix um changes. So the there were three scenarios reviewed as far as that gross receipts tax the rate and the dollar per thousand of gross receipts was the final determination that the subcommittee was recommending. So next steps moving on to the next slide after this one more. Thank you. Um if if the council needs to decide on a model um if if the council would like to affirm the recommendation um or if there's another model that's decided upon but a decision needs to be

made in order for us as the staff um can start doing outreach with the community and um the businesses. There's also a cap to be re-evaluated for the $10 million and over um to make more sense with um how the the revenues that we're seeing um with with the businesses in Brisbane. Uh we have to prepare ballot and ordinance language as well as um finalizing all of that by July in order to meet the deadline to have this on the ballot this November. So with that, that's the end of this um discussion um or presentation, but I do have Eric Meyers. Um he is on the panel if you have any additional questions for the study.

Thank you, Cararolina. I'm sure we're going to have some questions. I'd like to start with Council Member O'Connell because you are part of the fiscal subcommittee and you may have some clarifying questions. I don't really have clarifying I don't have questions because I understand this material very well and this was a subcommittee that I was really excited to see the work product that came out of it and how we could simplify it and make a very baseline um judgment call on how to apply business tax fairly in this community. Um, and so I' I think most of mine is going to be in discussion. Um, and that might be considering considered selling our plan to the rest of the council or explaining it in terms that I think would be easy to understand, but I don't really have any questions for staff on this.

Okay. Very good. Council member Lens. Um, yeah. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um um would you mind going back to the slide that showed model two? The the last model two slide, please. The recommended. Yeah. Oh. Uh yes, the recommended. Okay,

there you go. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, I'm just trying to get an understanding of uh what the difference would be uh in the amount of revenue that the city would receive. So, if we left everything as is, it probably would stay flat around $250,000. So, if we applied model 2, it would go up to 263. Or is it 1.865 million? 1.8 1.8. Okay. I Yeah. The the additional increase would be the 1.6 if we were Okay. But this is projected obviously that if if I may,

this is model two, option three. There was three different options in model two that we considered. Okay. So, we didn't see that in the slide here. So, that's right. I just want So, instead option three, I'm thinking model three. But correct. Okay, thank you for the clarification, uh, Council Member Okonnell. Okay, so it would be 1.62 and so the um that's okay. That's that's all I that's the clarification I was looking for. So, thank you. Okay. Um, Pro Tim Davis, no questions for me. Council member Kern,

just a couple of questions. Um, so Karolene, I heard you say clearly here today it's April 16th. You have enough time to get this on the ballot if we give the green light tonight? We do. Okay, that's fantastic. Um, so in terms of gross receipts, this is a two-part question. How do we audit the accuracy of the self-reported gross receipts? That's the first part of the question. The second part of the question is what are you using in your models as estimated leakage and that would be sort of known under reporting. I'm going to leave that to Eric who helped develop the models.

Thank you.

Sure. Uh good evening and thank you council member. Um so to to the gross receipts um to the leakage question I should say we don't model leakage as such but we have built in a 10% uncertainty discount. So what we did was we took the if we had reported gross receipts which as you saw many of your businesses report and we took those gross receipts and we discounted them um and looked at given what they reported what would if we applied the new tax rate what would that result in. And so we did apply a uncertainty discount uh but not so much a strict leakage model.

Okay, that answers my question there. And then back to the auditing, how do we how do we conduct an audit on this?

So generally speaking, as you noted, these taxes are self reported, self assessed, much like income taxes are. Um the way that an audit is typically conducted is if a there's some reason for the audit obviously. So we'll assume that b um we're going to look at essentially what is your basis for reporting the gross receipts that you reported to this location. Um and the general rule is you want to have a procedural approach. um and work with your taxpayers. Uh but as you go into an audit, you're going to be looking for typically payroll and property in the city and how those line up with their worldwide uh ratios. So, we'll ask for uh other tax returns, maybe profit and loss statements, work with the taxpayer to paint a picture of their business model and what an accurate measure of the taxable activity is within the city.

And correct me if I'm I'm wrong, Eric, that is a separate engagement to have the audit completed. Correct. for a that's part of our compliance team. Yes. Correct. Thank you, Eric. Appreciate that. My final question is for the subcommittee. When you were working with uh the finance team here in Brisbane and um HDL, the consultant, did they provide you with projections uh with a range for model 1, 2, and three? Were you able to see that? Okay. Cuz that was not presented, I think, to council member Lent's point. That was not presented. I'm nodding my head. Yes, they did. Yes, they did. Very good. Thank you.

And and some of what was not in all the different models, it got so complex. Our request of staff was not to bring all of that complexity here tonight or we'd be here for hours because it it took us a long time to get through it all, but just to distill it to what is the easiest to digest from this. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. I I actually don't have any questions at this time either. Um do we have any members of the public wishing to make comment? We have a hands raised from Christina F. Chris Flowski. Oh, go ahead.

Hi, I thank you for for taking my my it's actually a question. I'm I'm trying to find this presentation among the agenda items online. I'm unable to so I can't go back and take a look at the slide that compared the city with other jurisdictions. And one of my concerns is that we are not like others. There's so many things that are different about Brisbane that that that comparison is not particularly meaningful to me. Now, however, we might think we're similar. Um, so that I just want to express a concern about using that as a meaningful metric. Thank you. I I would like to respond to you, Chris. um the subcommittee actually brought that up in our discussions. We were very aware of that and so in going through our meeting and the different models um we were very aware of that. Any other members of the public? City clerk?

No, Madame Mayor. Anyone here tonight? No. Yes. Mitch, come on up here. Mayor Mack and council members, I'm Mitch Bull, your director of economic vitality. And I also want to thank the staff, Karolina's group, HDL, and the subcommittee in going through this. We haven't updated this in 46 years, basically. 43 years exactly. And things have changed tremendously within this town in 43 years. And the business community is much more complex today than it's ever been in our history.

And one of the things that when we look at we look at gross receipts or we look at employees, we we tried to futureproof this a bit and and to to Chris's comment that Brisbane is different. We are different than every other city. We we are by far the smallest city by population, but if you look at our business groups here, we're bigger than many.

And so in in that regard, we're not that much different. We don't have a lot of retail, but we have a lot of wholesale. We have a lot of warehousing. We have corporate headquarters. So we had to look at, you know, how do we address these types of businesses? Have we done it equitably? Have we done it fairly? And the truth is we've done it more than fair for the businesses to our own detriment because we haven't changed it in 43 years. And that that's you know I would suggest we do this at least every 10 years in the future.

Now the other thing is when we look at gross receipts you have many businesses that don't have any receipts. They're startups. They're small. They're R&D. They're biotech. They don't have a product. We what we don't have listed there is gross receipts. We also blended in cost of business operation. That's what you do in the case of you don't have gross receipts. What does your business cost to run in Brisbane? That's what we're going to use to measure these businesses. That way they're not getting away with saying, "Oh, we don't make any money, so we don't owe you any taxes."

And headcount is a flawed um measurement. In this advent of AI and robotics, headcount's a losing proposition. Um, San Francisco has done payroll tax for years and years and years based on headcount. Yeah.

And we've taken businesses away from San Francisco for that very reason. So, so I think what what you've seen with with the the uh the different methodologies we went through and like Terry said, it was a lot of different charts and graphs and the difference between the five uh differentations where we narrowed it down to one. The difference in the model was only about $200,000 a year and the the implementation was much more intense because we were trying to parse out which business goes into five, six, seven, eight different categories. Still smaller than the 18 we have now. But Terry brought up the point is businesses like to know where they stand.

So we can print this on one page and say, "Okay, here's your here's your thing. is a dollar per thousand and they know what they're going to get. They don't have to guess. All they know is what their business reports and that's what it is. We've tried to make it also generous for startups, homebased businesses where we've kept it down to a minimum $50 and we may address that in the future to go to $100 because 50 may not even charge what it costs to process the paperwork as Terry brought up during our discussions. So, I mean, those are things we're looking at, but all in all, this is a I believe very equitable for the businesses and for the city. Thank you. Thank you, Mitch.

Thank you, Mitch. Yeah, he just said it all. We didn't want to hurt Mic drop. Oh, I just said mic drop.

Oh, yeah. We didn't want to hurt small business, but we wanted them to be in compliance and not get too complicated so they would understand it and also to capture those businesses that gross receipts may not apply. They say, "Oh, we don't have a product." So, this this was really very intensive and I really appreciate staff and HDL for the time they took with us because it was it was a lot a lot to go through. I'd like a a council discussion here. How about we'll start with Council Member Kern.

Thank you. Um couple of observations. Um last time we looked at this, it was Ronald Reagan's first term in office, which is just crazy. Um uh thank you for uh your analysis on this uh staff uh subcommittee and uh HDL. Uh I looked at the models that you presented. Uh I really like model 2. I like that you're recommending that. I think that this makes for a very easy to understand ballot measure uh for people to get behind. Um your slide demonstrated that it will uh benefit the city immensely. Uh and so I'm uh 100 100% on board and I just want to thank you for your efforts on this. Okay.

Thank you, Mayor Prom Davis. I couldn't agree more. Um kudos to the subcommittee. I know it was a lot of waiting through charts and information, but I just I love how succinct this staff report is. You really considered all the options and presented what I think is is a clear winner. So, um, you know, this is long overdue. And in a time when, you know, our budget is either in a deficit or just kind of barely making it the last few years, um, one of the things we've been talking about extensively is figuring out how we're going to increase our revenues.

And it's not just about cutting the expenses, but how are we going to make more money? And so, this is a real tangible thing that um, you know, we're working on to increase those revenues. And I I think that um I think that it's it's it's not out of line for us to ask this of our business community. I don't I I don't think that this is going to be a tremendous hardship to our businesses and I think it just brings us up to modern times. So yeah,

thank you, Council Member Lens. Yeah, I just want to thank the subcommittee for their hard work and yeah, going through all the details and evaluating the the different models with staff. Um, I know that this some Mitch has been talking about for a while and and I'm glad to see it uh, you know, almost get there. I mean, obviously I don't want to jinx it. I'll knock on wood. The voters still have to approve it. It might be a tough one out there for No, I'm sure it's going to be a slam dunk. But yeah, like you said, Madison, this is long overdue. Same with you, Frank. and um and I'm glad that you that you really looked at you what is fair and uh for u providing the best model for our businesses and and that was something that yeah you know we all have you know concerns about because we we want to we want to have our businesses thrive but there's also you know as you say Madison being up with the times with what is uh needed to be paid And you know that um that that operation was it operating cost

cost of operations cost of operations. Yeah. you know, cuz I was thinking, oh, you know, what if you have your your your office in South City and then you have your factory in Brisbane and 5% of your workforce is in South City and 95% of your workforce is in Brisbane and sorry, you don't get anything based upon right the the current model this now we capture that and that's so smart and thank you. Thank you for uh putting that forward for us. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Council Member Okonnell, please. So, I want to address the we're not like others. And when we were looking at different businesses and how to tax them and how to make it fair and it even came down to how do we attract businesses we want or detract businesses that we don't want and that becomes very convoluted and what I may want is different from what some other citizen may want. So while we were looking at this and we were evaluating what other cities do, we noticed that one city to our south had very low taxes for biotech

and research and development, but they taxed contracting really, really, really high. And what do those biotech companies do? They remodel every five years. They have to put all this capital into their buildings, they were paying their business license tax indirectly

through contracting services, which was a pass through that didn't have to go through their corporate headquarters to say, "Oh, this city charges this huge set tax." Oh, no. They're low tax, but they're getting it inadvertently. Mhm. And to us it looked inequitable to do that. Um and so buying by by being across the board, it leveled that playing field. And then we looked at how businesses that contribute sales tax, we don't want to chase them out of town,

but because what they contribute in our local sales tax to us directly gets offset by their business license as a credit.

Mhm. The big, let's say, the big five in town are still going to be paying the minimum in business license tax because they're offset completely by sales tax and it contributes so much more than what any business license tax we could put on them would be. And then we looked at and so that took that, you know, we're not going to chase away a big sales tax producer with this type of tax. And then we looked at how people that don't have t don't have a product and how we can capture that. And by implementing the cost of operations, it it takes away that worry that the next warehouse is going to be all robotics or it's it's going to be because they're going to have to invest in that robotics. It takes away um not having a product because it's just throughput and so they don't have any sales. They don't have any product. They don't. But having that business, having that building, having those operations, how many trucks they have to have, all those things are taken into account. So when it gets down to this is a penny on the dollar

and nobody bothers to stop to bend down to pick up that penny anymore. They're not even printing pennies anymore. And so, you know, we looked at, you know, 50 cents on the dollar or the thousand and we looked at $1.25 and $1.75 and we had all these charts and graphs and I said, "Let's just make it $1. Make it simple. It takes so much stress off of our accounting office to not be trying to categorize my business as different from your business." Um and and so that is something that it just it it equalizes it makes it a very level ground level level playing field. And so what we came up with I think really is a really good way to bring us into the to this century basically um and it futureproof stuffs. So no matter what ends up being in Crocker Park or being at the Baylands or in our local shops is going to be producing sales tax or business license tax in a reasonable measure. So besides this council being on board with it, I really want all the public to be on board with it too. And so along with this, the subcommittee discussed outreach, both outreach to our business community, to our locals, because they're the ones who are going to be voting on it, and how we could achieve what we need to do within the proposition, um, you know, to put this on a ballot. And I think staff did a wonderful job on giving us so many opportunities to weigh in on three options with well three scenarios with three or four options each with four or five different rates each. And when we really came down to it, we nailed it with this

one, I think. So, I I'm just really proud of the collaboration that the mayor and staff and I had and really think that Mitch's contributions and and HDL's contributions were great. They gave us so much more information than we really needed to have, but we needed to go through that. Nice.

I don't have a whole lot to add to that. That was really comprehensive and thank you for wrapping that up and putting the bow on it. Council member Okonnell, there's one thing I missed that hasn't been said is that in all of my time on the council and even before, you have always been known as the the fiscal sage. And I have to say, you came through with flying colors, proved your metal because the some of the questions you came up with or we were struggling for 20, 30 minutes and and she would say, "What about this?" And we'd all go, "Oh my god, yeah, what about that?" So kudos to you. We didn't thank you enough, but you really your reputation there is welld deserved and appreciated. It was a pleasure working with you and staff and Mitch, everyone. This this was a tough one. And and I'll just say that the fiscal subcommittee has been on on a bit of a tear to try to write the ship where things haven't been increased for years. And we're not trying to gouge anyone. That's not where we're coming from. We don't want to to hurt businesses. We want to promote business. But when you haven't raised something for 40 years, you've got to be prudent and and not barrel people over, but be realistic that that and and the simplicity was also a major factor. Keep it very simple so people can understand what we're trying to do and that we're being reasonable at the same time. So, thank you for that. And this isn't a voting item tonight, but I believe this is to give direction to staff. And I think it's pretty clear we want to move ahead on getting this ready for a ballot measure.

Thank you very much. And just wait for the next report from the fiscal subcommittee. Oh yeah, I can't wait. I'm really excited about me too. The next one's going to be really good. Oh, I just want to say it's not it's not a penny for Come on up here. They can't hear you at Penny on the dollar. It's not a penny on a dollar. It's onetenth of a penny on a dollar. 0001 per dollar. Yeah. So, it's smaller. Tiny. And they definitely don't print those. They don't print those. And we won't bend down to pick it up.

Yeah, that's right. All right. Moving on. We're at staff reports. the city manager's report on city updates and upcoming activities.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of council. I wanted to share a couple updates on um topics that have been on the council's mind of late. First, I want to commend um city staff, in particular uh our police chief, Will Munoz, who works in our code enforcement department, Jason Quan, who's with the police department, and Caroline Chung in my office for the work that they did in the last month related to the dog leash issue that the council directors on. As we outlined in this week's blast, you saw that over the four weeks of this uh pop-up project, we call them, we saw our verbal warnings actually go down over the course of of that of those four weeks, staff was literally on foot walking the park, walking Corey Road to ensure compliance. Um 44 hours of staff time was spent having communications with the public. Um, we did find that the majority of the people that we were interacting with who had dogs off leash were not from Brisbane.

Wow. That was an interesting statistic.

So, moving forward, we're not going to be announcing that we'll be doing this. Uh, we won't be saying we'll have another POP. Um, but we were planning to do so. And in order to keep compliance up, uh, we're really going to move towards the enforcement piece. We think we've done an exceptional job with the warnings and uh we're going to uh shorten that leash if you will moving forward. Secondly, uh I want to also commend uh staff, particularly public works, communications, my team on uh the curb painting uh that went on a week and a half ago. Uh we had wonderful turnout. We had so many people turn out we actually moved to additional curbs. Um so we anticipate uh future events such as this. um received a wonderful email from a resident who's involved in one of our committees who said that she was driving back into town and her daughter said, "Look at the pretty curbs, mom." So, we've touched someone. Um excited to hear that. So, um um special thanks to Christina and Molly who are managing our Brisbane Cares program who uh this is part of it. So, we'll continue to see that expansion. Let me go over the calendar with you over the next few weeks. And as a reminder, the council uh doesn't have a meeting in the fifth week of this month. Number of events are coming up. Earth Day habitat restoration event at Al Canyon 9:30 to uh 12:30 uh on Saturday. Um are you going to be out for that one, Christina? Christina will be out for that one. Molly as well. It's hosted by uh Ocure and it's in honor of birthday.

San Bruno Mwatch. Thank you so much, Michelle. Appreciate it. on uh April 23rd all day Earth a week compost giveaway at the same location everyone's familiar with under the tunnel bridge on the same day at 4:30 count uh Vice Mayor Davis is holding her office hours from 4:30 to 6:00 in the community park we hope you can come out for that on the 25th uh next Saturday big event the unveiling and the ribbon cutting for the Alvarado and Sanino stairwell if you haven't seen it it is absolely Absolutely gorgeous. That'll be from 10:00 to 11:00. Uh just a reminder, we we will be closing the street just to make sure that there's no safety issues, but we hope you come out. Same day, 11 to 3 out at uh Sierra Point is Touch Truck. That's the fun one of the fundraisers we helped co-sponsor with um Silver Spot. And I'm delighted to share again that our little tiny electric street sweeper will be out. So, we hope you'll check that out.

I'm sorry, what was that? We have a a small electric street sweeper that we purchased that we're actually able to take up on some of our smallest streets. So, we're going to be showing off that piece of equipment. And what date is that? That's on the 25th of April, next Saturday. Do we each get a chance to drive it? Only if you're nice. Only if you're nice. Okay, that sounds like a guess. I think it'd be fun. It's actually not a guess. Where? Sorry for my terrible. Where where at zero point is that going to be located? Let me get the specifics. Near the harbor master office or in the lower parking lot or

um I just have the um 400 Sierra Parkway. I'm sorry I don't have the exact location here. I'll get that to you. Terry, did it did it say an address? Is it at the marina at 400 Sierra Point Parkway?

Okay, that's the marina office. Okay, thank you. Uh the following day on Sunday uh we'll be celebrating uh former beers brain mayors Ana Miller's life and legacy. That will be from 2 to 4 at the Mission Blue Center. Hope everyone's sending their thoughts to the family. We have a lagoon plan community meeting scheduled for April 30th from 5:30 to 7:30. I believe that's in the library. Yes, this is the library. So this is uh continued engagement on our efforts related to sea level rise in the in the lagoon. Then well there's one more event I wanted to capture in May before our next council meeting. Council member Kern is holding office hours I believe at the Altaltimore Clubhouse from f 6 to 7 um on Tuesday May 5th. Again that's Altaltimore Clubhouse at the ridge. That's uh Clippy and Mission Blue Drive. That concludes my report. Thank you.

And night in Little Reno, May 2nd. Oh my goodness. Oh, how did I miss that? Is it not on the calendar? Go from here. Night in Little Reno, Saturday, May 2nd. That'll be at Mission Blue from 6:00 to 10:30. Yours truly will be serving as a car dealer or something of that ilk. Hope to see you then. Not the pit boss. If you ever wanted to gamble with Jeremy, now is your chance. Roll the dice. Thank you. That's a busy schedule you just went through. Do we have uh any council members who would like to propose any future agenda items? Nope.

Seeing none, we'll move on. Countywide assignments and subcommittee reports. Council member Okonnell reports. No. Council member Kern, nothing. Council member Lent,

I do. So, I was at uh the commute.org meeting this morning and we had a presentation from Cal Train and it was um it's like there's a positive story and then there's a you know potential falling off the cliff story. So, I'm going to start off with the positive first, and that um during peak times uh during rush hour, uh the amount of people that ride the train is equivalent to three lanes of highway traffic. Wow. So, that's you know, huge, right?

Um you know, because of electrification now there's more trains. So every 15 to 20 minutes uh you can catch a train during the weekdays during rush hour uh 30 minutes uh at other times compared to 1 hour before and then uh you know there's uh weekend trains

which uh a lot of people take advantage of when they're going to events. So you just looking at from pre- pandemic to where we are today. So, back in 2019, Cal Train uh received 72% of its revenue through the fairbox, right? That was the best in the nation. Now, it's down to 29%. And it's been kind of flat for a while. I mean, uh you know, it got down to 21% in 2022 and it's built up to 29%. And you know that increase actually has been uh the best in the nation as far as increased wrership of any uh major transit uh uh major um train line. However, there is a $75 million budget deficit that they're looking at and if they do not

uh I think it's over uh a certain time frame. I think about five years. So if they do not receive, this is according to Cal Train, if they do not receive external funds, then they're going to have to make some serious cuts. And so this is why they're really promoting the potential uh ballot measure. They're gathering signatures at the at this time. And so if the ballot measure was not approved according to Cal Train that they were they would reduce um the weekday service from every 15 minutes during peak times to an hour. So all trains would be 1 hour. They would cut the weekend services. They would have early shutdowns, so ending operations at 9:00 p.m. So people who are working those late hours, they would be out of luck. And they would close stations. So they're saying they would close more than onethird of all stations.

Well, you know that we would be on the list, right? So that would that would uh drastically impact Brisbane. So this this presentation was an eye openener for me I have to say because I I I've been kind of on the fence just because you know Samontel County has its own measure for generating funds for um for public transit but you know public transit is more than just your own county where it's it connects all the nine counties and um Cal Train uh connects you know San Francisco San Francisco, I mean, um, San Francisco, Sanonteo County, and Santa Clara County. And so, it's, you know, when you look at the population that it it, um, serves, it's 30 37% of the nine counties, right? So, it's a huge huge percentage of people that it touches. And so, based on this, uh, you know, I'm I'm in favor of of hoping that that the ballot measure does pass. And so, um, yeah, so just wanted to put that out there. And then, uh, Kim.org in partnership with the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. I know that Chris brought this up at the last meeting. And so, they're offering these 1-hour bicycle education classes at uh, participating cities. And so, I'm going to send that information to staff and they could put that uh, um, you know, they can reach out to cum.org and see if we can't uh have that um service provided to us in Brisbane. And then I I don't know if um if this is the part where you you know a council member can ask for um guidance from the council to have a subcommittee address a particular topic. Would that is that appropriate now?

Sure.

Okay. So, um I just want to read this little thing here. So, it says, "In the past, the city council adopted zoning regulations to limit freight forwarding uh uses in Carer Industrial Park. And since then, the rise of online retail and modern logistics has introduced new high volume uses including van delivery hubs, high turnover warehouses, and facilities with extended or early late operations. And given these changes, it's appropriate to review and update the city's zoning framework similar to prior action on freight forwarding. The city of South San Francisco has already adopted regulations addressing these uses and may serve as a helpful model, particularly as these uses are expanding regionally. This review would help ensure Crocker Park continues to function compatibly with near nearby neighborhoods, the middle school, and surrounding trails while also being an economic engine for the city. And so I had reached out to council member Kern uh to see if there was some willingness to work with staff and evaluate the current zoning as it relates from an economic viewpoint. And I've also uh reached out to um city manager uh Dennis um that I would be bringing this forward. So if the council is okay to let the subcommittee um work with staff u that would be great.

You're examining it from an economic standpoint? Yes. Is there a reason why you're coming at it from that direction since it's a zoning issue? So, um there are, you know, the thing with economic uh vitality, it there's a lot of crossover, right? And so addressing it from an economic uh perspective allows Frank and I I think a valid, you know, nexus to work with Mitch and staff on that. So that's that's why um taking it from that angle.

Okay. So any other council members? So just as a comment or an aside on that, I think with the new business license projection that we have with taxes, it levels the playing field across all of the um commercial zoning uses um as far as that kind of economic vitality if was to pass our new business model. And so that might not be the direction for it to go. It might be to look at it health and safety more so because that is sort of what I'm hearing in and this was a request from a

from citizen from a citizen. Mhm. Um, again, I don't know if that would be a a better way to look at it, but I think that I mean, it's part of a much larger picture of changing zoning regulations than just the economic point of view. Um, but I think if they wanted to take a stab at it, as long as it's not a hugely costly measure, you could look at it there and bring findings back to us if your committee has time, I would assume. But

are we there's an existing cap right in the park that there's not to be not to exceed a certain percentage. We shouldn't really get deep into this because it's not agenda. Well, I feel like knowing that helps like that's what he wants to evaluate is that policy, right? So, to me that policy guides what committee this falls under, right? Like I would think that would be planning.

That's what I was going to say when you first introduced it. I was thinking that that's kind of traditionally what the planning subcommittee did was look into those kind of anomalies. Same with the moratorum on how did we there was a discussion remember a moratorum on um yes that's gone back to legal right now back in legal that's why it's not but what committee did that come out of initially planning issues so that makes sense for consistency that it should go to planning issues I think

if it's uh perhaps I could I could suggest this um I'd be happy to meet with Cliff and Frank and and further get some more details and and understand um the interests of the the members of the subcommittee and then um I could come back and and provide some feedback at the next council meeting if that made some sense. Okay. Yeah, we sus it out a little bit more. Okay, that makes sense. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Um Mayor Prom Davis, you have any reports? No.

Okay, well I've got one always. So here we go. I have a CCAG report. Um the board we heard extensively about ebike legislation that's pending in Sacramento and there's a huge variety of ideas and approaches as to how we protect riders from injury and fatalities. Assembly member Papen has a bill pending AB29. It would be a pilot program with a limited duration and that's to assess uh effectiveness. If it passes, it would authorize any Sonteo County local authority, meaning cities, um to adopt suggested language in the bill and customize an ordinance acceptable to their community. And CKG did vote to support the PAPP bill. Uh CKG also received a presentation from Samrand and this was on the Bay Area local investment plan. This is related to the proposed what you brought up um the proposed 5count sales tax measure. A portion of the tax monies would be what's called return to source meaning it would come back to San Monteo County. The exact dollar amounts are presently being estimated at around 50 million annually and it would be administered by SAMR. The board asked questions about how much of these monies would be used for operating expenses since Samr is projected to have an operating deficit in 2028. The response was that the exact amount is unknown but could be 60 to 70% of those funds. Mhm.

CG directors also asked for data on writership in each city, clipper card point of origin data and data on writer usage trends trends and uh Samr promised to come back with some of that data. Um just to note SAMR you probably know has been conducting a survey of county residents asking for residents to provide transit priorities for their communities. The survey did close April 15 and those results should be forthcoming in within the month. May I ask a follow-up question? Yes.

In your CKG meeting, this was Sam Trans giving the presentation and they said 60 to 70% of that by county tax. Yes. Would be going to be administered by SAM Trans or would all of that be administered by SAM Trans? All of the 50 million would be administered by SAM Trans. 60 to 70% of that and that that 50 million is an estimate. They don't really know for sure. Could be more, could be less. 60 to 70% they estimate at this time would have to go to operating expenses because there's a huge deficit they anticipate within.

And so they did not they did not discuss how much would be going to Cal Train. No, this is this is this is specifically was a conversation about the local investment plan because some of that they through the survey tried to find out what are your priorities for your city such as in Brisbane we would benefit from microtransit. different residents in different cities said cleaner trains or we want more bus stops just depending on what their residents were looking for. How that would be parsed out, nobody knows yet because it's all estimates.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else? All right. Ora community, you know, I do have one thing I forgot to mention, Madame Mayor, and that's commute.org or has their 2026 commuter challenge. I'm going to give this information to staff so they can pass it out in the appropriate uh locations. Okay, there we go. Thank you for that. And Madame Mayor, yes. Uh I would like to propose some subcommittee topics.

Oh, please go ahead. Uh the first one up would be uh I would like to request a meeting when appropriate uh for the beautifification on city property subcommittee to discuss our own Molly Brown's adopt a spot initiative. So when Molly's ready to move that forward, uh I think we should have a meeting on that topic. The second one is a direct result of the March 2026 very severe ransomware attack um on Foster City uh which caused them to declare a state of emergency because they had to shut down uh their entitle their entire system uh for all municipal services for over a week.

Um so I am requesting a emergency preparedness subcommittee meeting to review the state of our emerging protocols. Uh, I did take emergency protocols. I did take a look at a few of them. And since I'm on sort of a presidential theme tonight, the last time some of them were updated, Gerald Ford was in office. So, um, it's time for that review, I think. Okay. Thank you very much. Do we have any council input on that? Sounds like very good suggestions to me. All right. Uh, we're into oral communications number two. Any member of the public wishing to make public comment at this time? Communications.

I'm sorry, what? We can't hear you. We didn't do written communications. Madam Mayor, we have to do written communications. I'm sorry. Didn't mean to overlook you.

We received correspondences from Jason Barnaby. Response requested. 120 constituents urge action on preschool program cancellation. Lori May Vonyi followup survey on the petition to reinstate the Brisbane preschool program. That's two emails on April 14th. Jill Reed partnership request Brisbane's 2026 27 support for SSMC. Susan Laauo Brisbane Corey plans Tony Vario's Corey um Corey Road Trail project and Michelle Sammon April 2 council meeting comments.

Thank you. Council member Kern got me all excited with those subcommittee ideas. I got distracted. All right, now we're back to oral communications number two. Do we have any member of the public wishing to make public comment at this timeski? Go ahead, Chris.

Hi there. Thank you. Uh and thank you to council member Lind for the the summary of the Cal Train situation. I just want to clarify that that's 75 million deficit annually. That's annually and that's what's projected. So, um it it's a pretty serious situation and I appreciate having brought attention to that. Thank you. Anyone else? No, Madame Mayor. Okay. Thank you for joining us. This meeting is adjourned at 8:22 p.m. All right. Have a good night.