Town Council - Regular Meeting

All right.

Good evening, everyone. I'm going to call this meeting of the Los Gatos Town Council to order on September 15th, 2026. We'll begin with a roll call.

Council Member Enni.

Here.

Council Member Hudes.

Here.

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

Here. We have a quorum. We'll begin with our Pledge of Allegiance, which will be led by our Vice Mayor Marie Risto. Thank you. And we're going to do a few presentations to kick off our meeting, but just wanted to begin with a reminder that if you would like to speak on any items on the agenda, please fill out one of the yellow speaker cards that are behind the seats there and indicate what number of item you would like to speak on. Okay. So we have three presentations this evening. The first of which is for our residents of the month. I cheated a little bit this month with two residents of the month. And so can Jonathan Knowles and Terry Hope please come forward? We can give them a round of applause. So folks that are involved in town probably know Terry Hope and Jonathan Knowles well. They both do many, many things. Terry Hope was a longtime owner and operator and manager of Los Gatos Roasting Company and born and raised in Los Gatos. And Jonathan is a prolific roaster. person and does many, many things. I had two people in my life that thought you were an astronaut, which Jonathan is many things. He's not an astronaut, but close. But this evening, we are recognizing Terry Hope and Jonathan Knowles for their service to Los Gatos with Los Gatos Music and Arts and Jazz on the Plaz. And so Jazz on the Plaz, as many of you know, is our premier summer concert series that happens just down the street from here. And an immense amount of effort goes into putting those concerts on every month and keeping them free for the community. And what is maybe lesser known about Jazz on the Plaz is that the proceeds go to supporting youth scholarships and support for And so I'll just read a little bit about you all. So congratulations to the both of you on being named Los Gatos' Residents of the Month. This honor recognizes Terry as the president of Los Gatos Music and Arts and Jonathan as the chairman of the board. Every year you bring one of Los Gatos' favorite summer traditions to life through free world-class concerts in the heart of our town. Moreover, you've championed work for funding youth workshops and music and art scholarships, investing in the next generation of local talent well beyond the summer season. Your dedication and vision to keep this beloved tradition alive, Year after year ensures that many of our neighbors can dance, gather, and connect each Wednesday of the summer. Thank you both for your love of this town. We are better for you both, and so I'll present you each with a certificate here, and I'll hand the mic over to Jonathan.

Thank you, Rob, and thank all of you for making Jazz on the Plaz this success it is. It wouldn't be what it is if people didn't show up. Next year will be our 25th anniversary, so it should be a very special year for you folks. And we think it's just so meaningful, not only because of our mission. We are mission-driven, as you mentioned, Rob, but because in these times, where so many people feel so divided, we bring all of those people together every week for eight to 10 weeks every summer. And for at least a few hours, we're able to set that aside and even have dialogue that's sometimes productive and meaningful. Thank you and the rest of the council for your support of this event over the years. We are a private nonprofit, not a town event, but we still work closely with the town to pull this off. So thank you, Rob.

All right, now I have the honor of recognizing Los Gatos' business of the month, which this month is Heritage Pub and Chop House. So we have Christy and Yvonne here, two of the partners and operators of Heritage. And for those that aren't aware, Heritage is a wonderful new-ish addition to Los Gatos. It's only been about a year, right, which is amazing. So Heritage Pub and Chop House, the name is somewhat self-explanatory, but it is just a wonderful community space. tell you all a little bit about why Heritage is our business of the month. So Heritage brings high-quality pub favorites and chop house classics to our community. Think fish and chips, prime rib, and cold Guinness, all inspired by family recipes. And one of the things that I think you'll feel when you walk in the door of Heritage is the hospitality. It feels like you're a regular there, even if it's your first time. And one of the reasons I'm recognizing Heritage today is because of the role that Heritage plays in the Los Gatos community. They are a true gathering space. They host trivia nights monthly. They pack the bar for LGHS football games and put it up on their TVs and also brought a lot of folks in for the World Cup. And they show up regularly at Los Gatos community events. Just this weekend they were at Oktoberfest handing out what felt like thousands of pretzels. And they were excellent. And Christy and her husband Walker are very much involved in the community and actually helped organize the 9-11 ceremony along with the Los Gatos Veterans Memorial and Support Foundation and have just been amazing community advocates and supporters. So thank you both for giving our town a place that feels like home and for all that you do for the town of Los Gatos. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mayor and Council. Thank you for this incredible honor. You know, we wanted to build something for the community. Walker and I were raised here in Los Gatos, born and raised here. And we moved away for a little while. My husband is 26 years in the Air Force. And then we came back, really raising our daughter Brooke in the town that raised us. And so it was really important to have a space that brought the community together. And especially Los Gatos, like Rob was saying, that we like to show the Los Gatos high school games, whether it be field hockey, softball, football, We have a big screen TV in the back. So it's just fun to bring the community together that way and also share the love of food. Who doesn't love food? This is executive chef Yvonne right here. And our first memories are around the table, sharing a meal with one another. And that's what we wanted to bring back, something that we can laugh, we can share, share memories. And we hope that when you walk in those doors, you feel that sense of family and home. So we look forward to having you there or seeing you again. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Definitely check out Heritage if you haven't yet. OK, so our last ceremonial item this evening is a proclamation. And before I begin, I just want to note that this proclamation does address suicide and mental health. And so if this is a difficult topic for you, you are more than welcome to step out. This will just be a couple of minutes. So tonight I am honored to present a proclamation declaring September 2026 as suicide prevention awareness month in the town of Los Gatos. And I'll be presenting that to our wonderful students and wellness coordinators who can come on down. So suicide, tragically, is something that touches people of every age and background, and prevention is something we all share the responsibility for. Don't be shy. And so one of the reasons I wanted to specifically proclaim this month Suicide Prevention Month is because we all have a role in ensuring that we prevent suicides in our community. And that includes recognizing warning signs, checking in on the people around us, listening to others without judgment, connecting people to support. And that includes the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which is available in the state of California 24 hours a day by call, text, or chat. That's 988. This proclamation also recognizes that young people face particular challenges today and they thrive when they have trusted adults and supportive schools that remind all of us that asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. That's exactly the work that the LGHS Wellness Center does and why I'm honored to have some of the wonderful folks from the Wellness Center here with us to receive this proclamation. I also want to talk about one of the employees who is Amrita. who has helped build the Wellness Center from the ground up, so much so that last year she was named California School Employee of the Year in Health and Student Services and was one of only nine recipients statewide of 135 nominees, so a big deal. And then we have our amazing wellness ambassadors here with us. So these are all Los Gatos High School students. And I think they're really proof that peer support and connection are alive and well at LGHS. With the many pressures that face students in our community, I think this work matters more than ever today. And so on behalf of the town of Los Gatos, Thank you to each young person here for making sure that students in our community know that they are valued, supported, and never alone. So I'm honored to proclaim September 2026 as Suicide Prevention Awareness Month in the town of Los Gatos in honor of Los Gatos High School's Wellness Center. Who wants to hold it? Everybody can get a few hands on it, yeah. Big thank you to all of our recipients who made time on a Tuesday evening to be here with us in the town of Los Gatos. Okay, so that concludes our ceremonial items and presentations, which now brings us to the business of the meeting. And so we will begin with the consent calendar. Items appearing on the consent calendar are generally taken in one motion. And are there any council members looking to pull any items from consent this evening? YES, COUNCILMEMBER HUGHES.

I DON'T WISH TO PULL, BUT I WISH TO MAKE A COMMENT. PLEASE GO AHEAD. WITH REGARD TO ITEM NUMBER 9, CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFLICT OF INTEREST CODE SECTION, I THINK THAT WE'RE MAKING SOME SORT OF ADMINISTRATIVE CLEANUPS TO THIS TONIGHT, BUT I DO THINK THERE HAVE BEEN A NUMBER OF concerns that have been raised about enhancing and suggestions to enhance our conflict of interest to disclose, for people to disclose relationships with organizations and individuals who are receiving money. And so I would just make the comment that I would hope that our policy committee would take another look at our code of conduct in the future maybe looking at some of the public comments that have come in and a model that's been suggested from san francisco that has an enhanced conflict of interest policy thank you okay i'll look for a motion

Oh, I'm sorry, yeah, I will turn to public comment first. Thank you very much for the reminder. We have one speaker on consent, which is Gus Hu. You'll have three minutes. Yes. Oh, maybe it's not.

Testing? Okay. I'd like you to poll number one because I spoke on it and it didn't have number six. It had... Said member of the public, two, four, five, seven, and eight, and I spoke on number six, so that was the easement on the property, and I'd like for you even to reconsider this tonight, because on August 11th, 2026, I looked up, and the public notice and stuff like that. And it was on the easement off of 178 and Town Oaks Drive, M-24013, Declaration ND-25001. You guys talked about it already, and you were looking for an easement off the driveway and stuff like that, and that's right next door to it. You know, that's on that street, and it was a 20-foot road easement. And you just said it was, you know, they didn't find any utilities because it was a fire emergency exit. And you guys should, because that's still being decided. And the residents there wanted some sort of access up that way. So you're cutting off their access road that came to that meeting. Another... The six, seven and eight, there's on this item, there's a million dollars each that if, you know, I don't understand, you know, I sent in a supplemental email and it just says that you're, you know, one's for a consultant and the other one's, you know, you're just doing surveys or, you know, whatever. If you can pull, at least talk about those three that you're dishing out a million dollars each for and it doesn't look like it's for work, it's just to, you know, supervise somebody. So those three things, especially number six, pull it and correct it because it's not even listed. And, you know, maybe you should reconsider, make a motion to reconsider because... That's something that doesn't come up, and I think it's a bite you by. Any questions?

Thank you. I'll look to the council for a motion. Yes, Council Member Domi.

I move to approve consent items 1 through 11.

Vice Mayor Risto.

Second.

Excellent. I'll call the roll. All those in favor? Aye. Passes unanimously. And we will now move on to verbal communication. So verbal communications is for any items that are not on the agenda. And each speaker will have three minutes to address the council. Please fill out a speaker card. And for folks on Zoom, please raise your hand. We'll begin with Shondell Cosgrove, who will be followed by Pat Kearns.

Hello, I'm Shondell Cosgrove. I was born here and raised here in Los Gatos. I wanted to discuss the... The way you have the homeless funding for the hotels, they don't seem to help us much. You have it so that we can go into the motel for like one or two days, and then you put us right back out into the the woods into our tents and you don't really help us, you just make it a little bit harder for us to deal with. I had a presentation to address to you guys if you could make some time to discuss the help that you would give us for finding and seeking homes to get into. I wasn't asked to be homeless. I've never been homeless before. And we are having a hard time. There's a few of us that will work with you and put the footwork out to find a place, but it's really hard for us to, you know, the funding of the applications and all this other stuff that they ask for when we go to look for a place. Um, the other thing was, um. Somebody comes in here regularly and. slanders us a lot and we're taking offense over what they say and the lies that they make and I'm asking to see if we can have them removed from the videos It's allowed, if you can do that, because I would not like myself being put out there for something that I'm not, for the town to see, and then they judge me by what they say. And I will be doing legal action against that person, but I'm tired of hearing that I'm something I'm not. So I would like to know if we're able to do that. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Hudas.

Yeah, thank you for coming and speaking tonight. At the beginning of your remarks, you mentioned that you thought that the temporary hotel program, which is meant to provide shelter from extreme weather, whether it's super hot or cold, a lot of rain, that that program was actually hurting more than helping. Could you explain what you mean by that and whether you think we ought to discontinue that program?

I'll take a second. This one incident was last Christmas time. It was very rainy. It was downpours. We were flooding, actually. The creek was coming up. And I kept calling in and calling in and calling in and asking, when do we get to come into the hotel? And we're soaking wet. And everybody was on vacation. Nobody was able to... call in and get any information from you guys, because the church would say, call the town, the town would say, call the church. And we just kept going back and forth. And the church said that we had to have 32 degrees or something like that to be. And I looked it up, and it never made it to 32 degrees at all. It made it to 37, which... being soaking wet, you're 32, and freezing, and everything else is wet. So it's like, it didn't help any, it didn't help us at all. And trees fell, and it was scary that we were out there in that weather.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, we'll now go to Pat Kearns, who will be followed by Sharon Childs.

mayor and council um i would like to withdraw my public comments you have such an uplifting council meeting that i don't want to bring a complaint and i will handle it in a different way and i just thank you for changing my mood thank you very much thank you very much um we'll go to sharon childs

who'll be followed by Johanna Swenberg.

Speaking of mood, this council meeting started out so exciting with everything, all the honoring of people. I feel like I am one of those people who love my community and I'm Sharon Childs. I am a resident and I'm representing myself, but I also would like to represent the Los Gatos Community Foundation starting over. Thank you so much for finally putting down our event floor in front of the bandstand. If you haven't seen it, it's there and we are thrilled to have it done. So a little bit of information, history about the bandstand. The Coppola that's on the top is actually what started the Los Gatos Community Foundation to raise money to build this bandstand. In the 1880s, it was on top of the Linden Hotel and it went into disrepair. There's a lot of history I can go into about it. But I wanted to just share that this is a very historic place in our town. And to have our event floor so that we can bring it and have it be even more so that we can use it. My good friend, Paul Kent, who was the person who started the Los Gatos Park dance 15 years ago when he was singing that first night and we had dirt everywhere. The poor guy couldn't sing by the end of the night. So that's why we have this. And now he has offered to have his band celebration in September of next year so that we can have some kind of dedication and opening. I just wanted to bring that to the council so that I can start figuring out who to talk to and how to get it done. And I just wanted to also mention that it's not quite finished because we are planning on cleaning up those bricks that we spent ten years raising the money so that we could actually build this and I'm just here to say I'm ready to keep moving because 13 years of me working on this, I'm not done yet. Thank you very much, Council.

Thank you very much. Okay, we'll go to Johanna Swenberg and then Gus Hu.

Good evening. Thank you, Council Members, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Town Staff. You have to forgive me, I went to the dentist just earlier, and that's my excuse if I'm a little tongue-tied. I'm speaking because last time somebody spoke, and it really struck a chord with me, so there's no call to action, this is more of a PSA. Because I want to talk about something that is essential to life, and that we take for granted until it fails. It's just water. Real simple. This may be a dry speech. Bad joke. Weeks ago, there was a fire at Lansbury Court. Some of us know about it. I think you saw it. Well, my wife and I lived just behind the street, and I was inside. My wife had gone for a walk. She ran back in saying there was a fire. She had already called 911. We went outside to check on the neighbors. Smoke was already visible beyond just a bad barbecue, and it was behind the house across the street. A helicopter was already overhead and we could hear the fire trucks on their way. Big relief. My wife helped get 1 of the senior neighbors out of the house right behind the house that was on fire. In the minutes, it took the firefighters to arrive. We watched the smoldering roof. Go from smoke to 10 foot flames. It was hot, it was windy. The firefighters naturally got to work quickly. They did what they did and they did it well. The neighbors were grateful for our emergency services as everyone would be. But I was also left thinking, thank God we have water. Something as simple as that. Their work would have been useless and things would have gone badly. It made me think of the Palisades. You assume there's water When there's not water, when it's needed, the result is deadly. So at the last council meeting, I heard from another resident, I didn't know this, but four families, apparently their homes were damaged when a broken water main had ruptured. So breaks happen, they find, they fix, move on. It's understood. I guess what's not expected and it's not acceptable is that four families in our towns can be harmed and then they're left without little recourse, kind of in a lurch or support from the town or the water company really. I was struck by the gentleman's speech because I certainly didn't hear about it. I just had a lot of empathy for him. So I see these two events are connected. I hope we have the leadership, which I believe we do, and the foresight to do two things. First, prevent those black swan events of no water when we need it. And second, stand by our families when they're harmed by infrastructure that we rely on. Infrastructure is a priority, and I know it is for everyone up here. Priority has to be shown before tragedy and after.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll go to Gus Hu, who will be followed by Kirstie Morrell.

Okay, legal notice, tonight I read that it was September 4th, there was supposed to be a legal notice on the WVMA Farley Road, and I don't know when that's continued, but it, You know, I don't think that's publicized if you put it in and then nobody tells you when the next meeting is because I have interested now, because I have. Appealed that, and you guys didn't prove it and went to federal court. I'm still dealing with that soccer soccer. Well, first I want to go to water bills increased. I always talk about that. I think the town should do something because it's just keeps on going up. It's outrageous. You know, people are paying service charges that are, you know, 250 year, you know, whatever. But let's see, financial committee last night, they spoke and they said, you know, you guys are trying to push your agenda on them, on measure A, and they did a whole thing about it. you know, they have authority to do what they're doing and you can't push that agenda. And then, you know, they complain, I complain about, you know, like these late, you know, one of them said Friday night at six o'clock, they got 500 pages they had to go through and talk about, you know, they didn't even get through all of it. It was like, you know, there's, A lot of money, $7 million you guys spent. And the last thing was soccer field closure. I put back, I said it's fake. I handed you this thing. It was two fake reports. It's pretty easily documented. The numbers don't go up. It doesn't get to 200 degrees on the soccer field on July 4th. 2024, when it was hot and 98 degrees, I went out there, and I put a meat thermometer, I got it up, it was 98 degrees, and it got up to like 137 was the hottest I can get the meat thermometer, and I did it in a couple places, and I took pictures of it, and I did it with my little cat in a hat thing next to it, so if you want those, I'll publish them. So, you know, if you can look into some of this, I think it's fraud, you know, and I wish that you'd explain some of the numbers because they don't add up. You know, so that's my, you know, just pointing out some of the facts. Thanks.

Thank you. And we'll go to Kirstie and then Austin.

Hello. My name is Kirstie Morrill. I'm a resident of Los Gatos. And I just wanted to air some of my concerns about the flock camera systems that are used in town. And I live in a neighborhood that might be, it might have been the first one to put flock cameras in place. And I was opposed to doing it at the time. and I still am for the same reasons, but it was clear that my neighbors were afraid, and they thought that installing these cameras would alleviate their fears. I really didn't want to argue with my neighbors, so I basically shut up about the whole thing, and that's the way it's persisted. We still have the cameras. At the time, those neighbors believed that the footage would not be available outside of the people who were, just those neighbors, and that it wouldn't be made public, it wouldn't be shared, and that it would be deleted on a regular basis. I don't know whether that's true and whether that's happened or not. Given a lot of the news about Flock, I think it may not be the case. It does not seem, it seems like there's been a lot of stories about the footage being shared broadly. So my main concerns about Flock or any surveillance system are the collection of data creates an opportunity for hackers to access the data and to share it, to sell it. So it creates an opportunity for identity theft and other crimes. And any system of surveillance can be used for purposes counter to that that it's intended for. We've seen them used for stalking. And they are also being used to target people based on their race or on their beliefs or on in some cases on a Crime in one place that is considered a crime such as choosing to have an abortion in one place People are followed in another location using these systems And any tool that is used by is used against one group can be used at another time against other groups. So I think we should all actually be concerned about this regardless of our ideology. And then third, any automated system has errors. And we've seen errors occur with flock data and errors in a system that is used by law enforcement can have dire effects on the victims and people have had their lives ruined. So, just, I'm really concerned about it. I mostly just make faces at the flock cameras when I go by them. But I did want to say something. So, thank you for listening. Have a good day.

Thank you. So thank you for your comment. So for all speakers, pro, con, regardless, please don't clap or react to speakers' comments in the interest of free speech. So everyone can get their three minutes. If you do agree with a comment, you can silently wave your hands if you want to show support. I will now turn to Austin, who will be followed by Joe Enns, which is our last speaker card on verbal in the room.

Good evening, Mayor, Council and staff. It has now been over two weeks since the revelation that sensitive Los Gatos investigative data relating to the town's operation of Flock and the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center leaked into the open internet. In fact, that very data remains visible on GitHub right now. This council refuses to meet this moment with the urgency such as severe breach of public trust demands at a time when the town is asking Saratoga to entrust it with its, sorry, one second, yeah. So at a time when the town is asking Saratoga to entrust it with its substantial flock ALPR network, it must demonstrate that it can be trustworthy stewards of sensitive data and respond to issues with transparency. The risks are not hypothetical. That same data set revealed cooperation with federal agencies, including ICE, DHS, and the FBI in violation of state law. And just this past week, a San Jose officer with access to the town's flock network was fired for using a personal device to share sensitive location data of a victim of domestic violence with the purported suspect. Every data point the department shares with outside agencies is another opportunity for neglect or negligence and abuse they're unprepared to guard against. The department continues to hide behind and abuse the California Public Records Act in responding to requests for data that could shed light on these abuses. And the council continues to refuse to perform its duties as an oversight body. I'm calling upon you to do what's right, launch an investigation, collect the facts, provide proper accounting of who has access to these data, close the gaps, and report back to the public. Thank you. Thank you.

So our last speaker is Sure, you can grab a public speaker card. You can just approach the podium. Our last speaker is Joe Enns, who is not in the room. Oh, I'm sorry, Joe, you're right there. My sincere apologies. Please come up to the podium.

I really like the work that you do. So you did getting rid of everybody down there at the end of Miles Avenue for whatever reason. I don't know what it was. I'm sure I got blamed for it probably. The cover story was some kids threw a bottle out. You can't get out. There was some great work with the police department, town manager, and whoever. Good work, you guys. Thanks a lot.

Thank you, and you can approach the podium. Yeah, you can just give the card to staff there.

Good evening, my name is Dustin Robert Jean Wilson. This is the city of Los Gatos. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to address this panel. I am a son of a very prominent trauma doctor. I lost my mother. My mother saved countless lives along with premature babies and and loved ones airlifted off of freeways. To the lives outside the ER, in bushes, I am proud to say they're my hero. My father served in Vietnam, guarding planes in the Air Force as a security police. I am so proud to become one of the forgotten. She worked in Compton at Killer King. She was one of the forgotten. Her mother was one that started the Backpack for Kids program. that you had to learn before you came and ate. I'll never forget there was a time that she survived three cancers, stomach, ovarian, thyroid. I want you to realize what you have in this town. You have survivors here. There are survivors here. There are countless survivors that were drawn to your hills. That were drawn to your hills because they were afraid to live in your city. These individuals need to be remembered, need to know that it's okay to live here. They need to know that no matter where it is that they're at, it's okay to live. It's okay to be here. It's okay to be in your city. I was representing as homeless the last nine days. I'm not homeless, you know. But what they did to me in nine days, They should have never have gone through. They should have never have gone through that.

Thank you. So that concludes our in-speaker comments. Then we have four hands raised on Zoom. I'll begin with Leanne. Leanne will be followed by KH.

Good evening, Town Council. I'm speaking about Creekside Sports Field. When you come to decide a replacement surface, the location of Creekside, which is beside and above Los Garros Creek, should be carefully considered. What impact is this plastic field having on the creek? How much debris is ending up in the creek? Are any contaminants ending up in the creek? Percolation ponds, underground aquifers, the groundwater table and eventually drinking water. There are multiple contaminants that need to be considered, but I'm not just talking about contaminants that you can see, like the macro and microplastics from the plastic carpet. I'm also talking about the contaminants that we can't see or easily filter, if at all, like nanoplastics, 6-PPDQ and PFAS. Where are they going? Where have they been going for the past 14 years? When the field was built, these contaminants weren't in the media so much, but they are now. And there is massive spotlight on the impact on our drinking water, our health and aquatic life. Consider also that a typical plastic turf warranty only warrants around 50% retention of the field's plastic carpet mass or blade height over the warranty period. So where does the other 50% or so go? Creekside has sparse blade coverage now, less than 50%. So where has that massive amount of plastic blade loss gone? A traditional field has around 40,000 pounds of plastic carpet alone. So we're talking about a loss of around 20,000 pounds of plastic blades, not infill, plastic blades. Infill is a whole other 400,000 pound story. Some modern and non-infill fields exist, but they can have two to three times the amount of plastic carpet and with a similar 50% coverage of plastic loss. But I'm not just bringing you a problem, I'm bringing you a solution. If the creekside location continues to be a sports field, the best way to maximise hours of use and keep our creek and waterways free of contamination is to have properly designed, installed, maintained and managed natural turf fields using drought tolerant turf grasses and organic management practices. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to KH and KH will be followed by KBT.

Good evening. And I am also calling because I'm concerned.

Oh, it seems like maybe you unmuted your, or you muted yourself. You can try unmuting again. There you go.

Hi, my name is Catherine Hedges and I am a member of Get the Flock Out Coalition and I am very concerned about the use of flock cameras or their other competitors because these systems are constantly being misused. for surveillance, for stalking, for all these things that have nothing to do with solving crimes, and they don't seem to prevent crime. It just seems to be easier to find people after they commit a crime, but then there's all this collateral damage. We shouldn't be using flock cameras. We shouldn't be depending on flock cameras and drones and surveillance for taking over the policing in Saratoga. You know, nobody wants that. I mean, if they really knew what it was all about, they wouldn't want it. And, you know, please do not... Keep the plot cameras. Don't replace them with another contractor. And don't take over the Saratoga police contract. Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll go to KBT, who will be followed by Tim M.

Hello, I'm with Safety Over Surveillance Santa Clara County, and I would like to specifically highlight that a San Jose police officer was just fired, shocking, for sharing sensitive location data of a domestic violence victim with his cousin. And he even did it on a personal phone. Los Gatos has multiple locations. surveillance camera companies on their contracts. You have Verkada, you have Axon, and you have Flock. What I don't understand is why you continue to lack the transparency that your supposedly high standards of your police departments are supposed to have. Whenever someone has asked for network audit logs, you frequently redact to the point that it looks like an Epstein file document. And you can't read any of it. You also delay. You also evade. And it is incredibly unprofessional. What are you hiding, Chief Field? What are you hiding? Show us what the reasons are for every single search. It is not going to disrupt your investigation to just simply give the preset dropdown menu that Flock now gives you, which is now their easy out that they are now providing you. Show the proper documentation. Show what is in the reason field for all of your searches. Because if this can happen in the San Jose Police Department, what are you all hiding? I encourage you, actually respond to Freedom of Information Act requests promptly and with the full transparency that you supposedly are supposed to give. Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll go to our last speaker, Tim M. Hello.

My name is Tim McKenzie. I'm with the Safety Over Surveillance Coalition. I'm also calling to speak in and ask that you cancel your contract with Flock. Do not pursue any other ALPR vendors. They are claimed to be tools of public safety, but the question is, who is being kept safe as... The previous speaker just mentioned there was a victim of domestic violence in San Jose who was put at risk, direct real material harms because of these cameras, the lax oversight. We know Flock is an untrustworthy company. Reporting just came out this week, the city of Boston last year went into a pilot program with Flock and explicitly as part of the contract, said, you will not share our data with anyone else. The nationwide lookup tool was turned on within three days of the cameras going online. And in violation of contract, just like it would be in California in violation of state law, the data was turned on by Flock for a nationwide lookup tool. I don't want to say they are untrustworthy. They are trustworthy. We can trust and rely on them for always being lax with our data, with sharing it as widely as possible, because that is their business model. They sell fear, so we pay them for cameras and they can collect our data to train their AI models and make money off of it. If you cannot protect it, do not collect it. The data cannot be safely stored, cannot be safely used. That is not just true of Flock, it is true of any ALPR vendor. The technology itself completely inverts the idea of an investigation, where usually a crime has to happen and then there is articulable suspicion that investigators can use, maybe even to get a warrant and use that to complete the investigation. Instead, Flock is a mass surveillance dragnet capturing everyone's data all the time, showing where we all go, all of our movements, where we live, go to school, go to work, where you spend time with your friends. This happens with all ALPR data. It is not a safe tool. Please cancel the contract. Do not pursue ALPRs. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, so that concludes verbal communications. We only have one item on the agenda this evening, one item under other business, and that is item 12, which is to receive and accept the Saratoga Police Services Transition Study, an independent cost review, among other things, and we will turn to Jamie Field, Chief of Police and our town manager to share with us. And I'll just, I'll make this reminder ahead of our next public comment period, but this is a reminder that no comments or reactions are allowed during the meeting to ensure decorum and that all speakers have a fair opportunity to contribute to the public dialogue. Thank you very much, Chief Field.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. It's an honor to be here for kind of historic delivery and initiative this evening. Before I start, I do want to give an overview of the lead up to this because it's been very significant and the due diligence that's gone into this. This has not been a decision or Initiative that's occurred overnight by any stretch. In April, we were approached and began some conversations with the city of Saratoga as they began to publicly explore alternatives for law enforcement services. In May, we came before Los Gatos City Town Council to provide an update and overview of what this could potentially mean for the town. In June, at the beginning, we approached Saratoga with a presentation and presence for them to be able to ask and answer questions in that format. Since then, we have engaged with consultants, as you'll hear tonight and what you see in the council packet. under item 12, and we also engage with many stakeholders and many meetings and other opportunities for engagements throughout the town to include probably just about every service club, many community forums, as well as many of the commissions including the finance commission just last night. So we have definitely made a concerted effort to inform our community and to be available to the community as well. To go back a little bit of how we got here, the Saratoga Law Enforcement Contract has been with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department for the last 70 years, since 1956 when they became incorporated as a city. That was one of the first resolutions that the city took. So they have provided services for the last 70 years. Their contract was about to come to term in this year, 2026. They received notice at the end of December 2025 of significant increasing fees, which then drove them to start evaluating other alternatives to see if there was other cost or service models. And then that presented the engagement that we have now initiated. So that's just a little bit of the background of how we got here and where we're present tonight on this item here. And so I have some statements as we move along through this slide. As many know, we're also presenting at Saratoga tomorrow, so I want to make sure to remain consistent in the information. In the proposal within item 12 this evening, we are not stretching today's department farther. We are proposing a partnership opportunity of building additional capacity, integrating it across three adjoining communities, protecting the service of Los Gatos and Monteserino, of which you will receive today. And giving Saratoga access to a full service municipal police organization with local presence and accountability. Before we get into the details of tonight, I want to start with what the proposal is, and also just as important, of what it is not. This is not a proposal to take the Los Gatos Monteserino Police Department as it exists currently, and simply stretch those same people and resources across another city. What we are proposing is to deliberately build a larger integrated municipal police organization serving three adjoining communities with additional staffing, supervision, investigative capacity, dispatch, technology, and town support added before that additional responsibility would be assumed. We're talking about adding capacity before adding responsibility. For Los Gatos, the opportunity is to build a stronger, deeper, and more resilient police organization. For Saratoga, the opportunity is to join an established full-service municipal police department with local presence, access to leadership, and strong community engagement, which we are very proud of. And tonight is not the final authorization to implement this partnership as noted in the staff report. The action is actually to receive and accept the Saratoga Police Services transition study and independent cost review. Yes, that includes Meliora. To approve the proposed regional law enforcement services partnership framework, financial basis and agreement. And then authorize the town manager to continue discussions with the city of Saratoga. Tonight's discussion is about the broader service model, staffing, responsiveness, investigations, community presence, accountability, and how this partnership can strengthen both organizations. So with that context, the question becomes, why would this make sense for either one of the communities? And with that, we'll start, maybe. Okay. Okay. There are really three reasons we believe this is worth considering. One, sustaining local service. Two, building regional capacity and strengthening the organization and availability of resources. And three, supporting a more sustainable fiscal future of the town. For Los Gatos, the benefit is not simply another partnership.

Did I mess it up? Thank you.

For Los Gatos, the benefit is not simply another partnership or another fiscal revenue source. The benefit is the opportunity to build a police organization with more depth, more operational capacity, more staffing resilience, greater investigative and specialty capacity, and a broader municipal platform to support increasingly complex public safety responsibilities. Growth for the sake of growth is not the objective here. This only makes sense if the organization becomes stronger, the Los Gatos organization becomes stronger, and the service experience for Los Gatos and Monteserino is protected and not diminished. The service across all three communities would be equal. This is one department with a proposal to serve three adjoining communities, not three separate police departments operating under one title. Los Gatos remains the employer and operating agency in this case. Monteserino continues an existing relationship as they have for the last almost 31 years. Saratoga would join an established municipal police organization. The value for Saratoga is that it is not simply purchasing a block of patrol hours. It gains access to a full municipal police department. It's a model of patrol, dispatch, investigations, supervision, technology and support, along with direct access to department leadership and regular detailed reporting, just as we did in August for Los Gatos and similar for Montes Reno not long ago. For Los Gatos, this builds a stronger department. For Saratoga, it provides a more local police department. One organization but three communities whose local priorities still matter. We have so many similarities. But the obvious concern for Los Gatos is whether adding another community spreads our existing resources thinner. How do we protect our existing service levels? Add capacity before adding responsibility, as I had mentioned earlier. That's the foundation of this model before you. We're not proposing that today's officers and professional staff simply absorb Saratoga. The plan adds 16.5 ongoing positions across police operations and town support, including seven sworn positions within that 16.5. It creates a fourth geographic beat, maintains field supervision, adds daytime surge capacity, and gives us the ability to reposition resources as calls and workloads might change. And I want to be very clear about the threshold we have used throughout this process. Saratoga expansion must not diminish police services in Los Gatos or Monteserino. We will plan with the best information that's available to us today. We've done our due diligence. But after launch, we measure what actually happens, response, workload, overtime, staffing, availability, and deployment, and adjust accordingly. So what does that additional capacity actually allow us to provide? So this slide provides an opportunity to explain the difference between municipal policing and patrol only models. Our Los Gatos Montes Reno Police Department versus what is currently contracted in Saratoga under the hourly model. This is a full service municipal policing model that we're proposing here tonight. In that essence, a resident's experience does not end when the patrol officer clears the call. There is dispatch, investigation, traffic enforcement, victim follow up, records, evidence, school engagement, community programs, technology and emergency readiness behind that call for service in this proposal. Same as what we have always historically provided here within our communities that we currently serve. That's one of the principal benefits to Saratoga, access to an entire municipal police organization rather than trying to recreate each of these capabilities separately. For Los Gatos, the same infrastructure receives greater depth and becomes more sustainable with resources and beneficial because we are adding capacity to functions we already operate. Some of this has been tested already and assessed. We've already done some testing for our dispatch and communications to make sure at many different points throughout Saratoga that we already have that existing ability to be able to provide those immediate communications. So what is the additional operational capacity? These positions are designed around service outcomes and it's not just about adding staff. Four patrol officers give us the staffing required to create the additional geographic beat and greater backup capacity. We have four patrol teams currently. That's how we currently operate and have been operating for quite some time. This model adds an additional officer to each team and does not require adding entirely new teams. We're expanding our capacity, we're expanding our team, we're not adding entirely new teams. The motor officer that's in this proposal would add dedicated traffic enforcement and collision capability in Saratoga. And of course, our patrol officers already have similar capabilities. They can do traffic enforcement investigations as well, although for the motor, that's a designated service. The school resource officer creates a sustained relationship with Saratoga schools. We already currently have one in our Los Gatos model that provides services to our school here. This would be an additional within the city of Saratoga. It's not simply an officer responding when something goes wrong, and this would tie together the continuity of Los Gatos Saratoga school district. The added detective would provide investigative and victim follow up capacity and responsiveness to Saratoga based investigations and assessment of crime trends. And providing some of that feedback that we do when our detectives go out and actually speak at neighborhood watches to customize the information that the communities are receiving. The community service officers that we often refer to as CSOs, like you see on the screen, they allow us to handle property crimes, traffic control, community contacts. They really are utility players on our police department, key members, and scene support without unnecessarily consuming some of the sworn time. Again, these are added resources. They are not today's Los Gatos officers being reassigned to Saratoga. People remain the center of how we police, but modern technology can help those people more effectively. We'll go into that in the next slide. Technology is certainly a force multiplier. Last year I mentioned and we made it a focus to really move the town towards a smart town approach. It's not a substitute for good police work, sound judgment, or community relationships. Our real time information, Capability, investigative cameras, axon systems, and drone program help us put better information in the hands of officers and dispatchers, develop investigative leads, and respond more effectively. We share this in full transparency at our community police academy, which sadly we had a very difficult time in filling this year. But we are looking forward to the start of the community police academy this coming Thursday. We've shared that information in full transparent form with other community members and including our elected individuals as well. Technology would be deployed consistent with applicable law, department policy, security requirements, and the policy framework established for the communities that we serve. This proposal is about who provides Saratoga's law enforcement services and how that service is structured. It is not a discussion about adopting additional Saratoga technology tools. I want to pause here because one of these tools, automated license plate readers or ALPRs, has understandably generated a lot of public discussion. We even heard some of that discussion tonight. I'm very proud of our policy and how we have this structured, how we implemented this very valuable tool. In just recent weeks, we've solved multiple retail theft cases and many other cases as well. ALPR is just one investigative tool. There are many other legacy tools that law enforcement has access to. This is an important tool, a valuable one, if used appropriately. We audit it every 30 days. It can assist in locating stolen vehicles, identifying vehicles associated with serious crimes, locating missing or endangered people, and developing investigative leads and ruling out potential involved persons. But supporting useful technology does not require abandoning responsible governance or education. I'm a full supporter of that. Useful technology and responsible governance are not mutually exclusive. We should expect both. And this proposed service partnership does not by itself decide the future scope of Saratoga's ALPR program. We're talking about a full service model here, not just the technology. Technology used in Saratoga would still have to operate within all of the applicable laws, the appropriate policy framework, security requirements, and the approvals contemplated in the agreement. Community policing, this is really our hallmark and our backbone of how we do police work here in Los Gatos and Monteserino currently. And I don't want technology to overshadow what actually defines this department. Technology, again, is a tool. Our community policing model is built around people and the relationships. One of the key things that is harder to put into a cost model is our culture. Community policing is woven into our culture. The Los Gatos Monteserino Police Department model of policing is relational, not transactional. We want and encourage our officers and professional staff to know their neighborhoods, their schools, their businesses, and the people they serve. We actually have a coffee with a cop scheduled for tomorrow morning at 7 AM. Some of us might need coffee at that time. And it's actually for our Monteserino community, and it will be at the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company. We don't simply hire people to answer calls, we keep high standards and hire good people. And then we expect them to become part of the community that we all serve collectively. That is what we would bring to Saratoga. It's a neighborhood watch, various youth engagement meetings, community police academy, explorers, volunteers, and emergency preparedness partnerships, not simply another badge on a patrol car. Saratoga allows us a greater pool of volunteers, and we are already engaging actually with the Saratoga CERT program for our November emergency preparedness drill, focused on preparing for El Nino should it come our path. Saratoga also already has a very strong community and CERT tradition. This goal isn't to replace those, it's to connect them and strengthen them. So let me make this practical. If you're a resident of Los Gatos or Saratoga and you actually need the police, what changes? For resident calls 911 or the police department, the call goes into our local police safety dispatch, which as most of us know is probably about 20 yards behind you. Dispatch assigns the closest appropriate resource based upon priority and geography. The responding officer isn't operating in isolation. Regional officers or CSOs and a field supervisor are available for backup and investigations. Records and specialty resources continue the case after the initial response. The critical distinction in this is the deployment is based on geography, not an artificial jurisdictional line. We don't base it on is it Monteserino or is it Los Gatos. Everybody receives equal service. In this case, all three communities would receive equal service. If the closest appropriate officer is two minutes away on the other side of the city boundary, the model is designed to use the proximity rather than ignore it. Our dispatchers actually go on ride-alongs with officers. They get to know the community and they come out to many of our functions. One of our dispatchers actually has one of our therapy dogs and was recently with us at a table at Jazz in the Place and even engaging on this specific topic. It captures one of the practical benefits of adjoining these communities. This slide describes geographic areas rather than the jurisdictional deployment through our four-beat structure, which I'll get to momentarily, and proposed in the workload assessment. At the same time, regional deployment should not mean Saratoga or any of the communities for that matter loses a local connection to the police department. We service, again, everyone equally. So how do we maintain that local presence if we were to expand even further geographically into the area of Saratoga? When I refer to regional, it does not mean remote necessarily. The Saratoga workspace would give officers a place to write reports, coordinate cases, meet the residents. and work within that particular community. If we have a case or we need to contact a Saratoga community member, we don't want to remove them from their community. We would like to have a visible presence, of course, in their community, just like we talked about in terms of this staffing model. We don't want to take somebody all the way here to Los Gatos. their community of Saratoga. This would be a space provided by the city of Saratoga, not by Los Gatos. It'd be provided for those tangible connections, as I just mentioned, to connect with staff, including the captain liaison that would be assigned to Saratoga, just like we have a captain liaison to Montes Reno currently. We're not representing this as another headquarters or a continuously staffed police station. It's a functional local service point within one integrated police organization. This gets to the four geographic models as I've referenced. The patrol concept is four geographic beats across the integrated service model. This is an updated beat structure that's based on the workload assessment that was done by the Meliora study. And as you can see, there's disbursement as equal as possible for calls for service and incidents that were evaluated over the 2025 period. And also taking a look at corridors and what makes sense in that geographic model. During the day, the planning model calls for four beat officers, a field supervisor, and a roving officer. At night, the proposal is for That daytime rover is important because it creates flexibility for backup, simultaneous calls, proactive activity and workload that doesn't fit neatly within a single beat. And don't forget that there's also school resource officer, motor officers, detectives, and school resource officers that are involved in this. It's not just patrol. This is intended to be one deployment system with geographic responsibility of the designated beats and resources reposition as demand changes. This is police department resources with beat integrity. Patrol is the most visible part of policing, but it isn't the only staffing required to be able to make this work happen. There's a lot of other folks that make this work get done. One lesson from our planning work is that you cannot responsibly expand a police service by counting patrol officers alone, as I just mentioned. It's critical to remember that dispatch has to answer those calls. Records has to process the work and the significantly mounting PRA requests. As we even heard reference to earlier. Evidence has to be managed. Vehicles have to be maintained. People have to be recruited and trained. Technology, HR, and legal support all have workload associated with larger organization. This was all taken into consideration. And that's why 16.5 positions include both police staffing and town support. The purpose is to fund the organization required to deliver this service, not merely the people who are most visible in a patrol car. Ultimately though, staffing only matters if it translates into the service that is received and experienced by that community, in this case Saratoga. We currently use approximately five minutes for priority one, ten minutes for priority two, and 15 minutes for priority three as we report out on biannually to both of the councils currently. These are not contractual guarantees. A major collision, simultaneous emergencies, geography, or traffic can change any individual response as sometimes calls may have to depend. The workload target matters just as much as the response targets. We don't want officers to be scheduled at 100% of their available time answering calls. We want to show that there's some discretionary time as well. Approximately 60% is the industry standard to be able to evaluate that by and that was the measuring tool that was utilized as you may see in the Meliora report. Just show that capacity. is available and necessary for the next emergency backup, proactive enforcement, community policing, report writing, and everything else that follows. This is why we added staffing before expanding the service area. The objective isn't merely to cover more geography, it is to preserve sufficient capacity to provide the quality of service equally to three communities that should expect that. And that brings us to an important question of how confident are we that the planning and assumptions behind this is getting it right? We commissioned Meliora because we didn't want to build this proposal on intuition alone. Meliora provided a assessment of our department from 2021 to 2024, and we brought that 322 page in a synthesized version back to the council shortly after it was completed. It wasn't because anything was broken with the police department. We were just fine. We wanted to know what we could do better. We wanted somebody to take an objective look at our police department and provide us with some of that feedback. We received 130 recommendations and we've taken action on probably at least half if not more of those and accomplished quite a bit in a short period of time. They are quite familiar, they being Meliora, with the services background and functions offered through RPD. For the transition study, we wanted an independent examination of workload, deployment, and organizational requirements. The conclusion is not that there is zero risk or that every assumption is certain. The conclusion is that the model is supportable with added staffing, appropriate relief, deliberate deployment, and continuing review. There are areas where town management made a different judgment from the consultant, town manager in concert with the police department. Meliora recommended greater dispatch relief. We are proposing to begin with 1.5 added FTEs and evaluate actual coverage during the fiscal year. Conversely, the historical data did not substantiate an additional detective, but we believe it is prudent to add that capacity in anticipation and reassess it after 12 to 18 months, as measuring investigative work and capacity is quite difficult. That distinction is important because we are not presenting this as risk free. We're presenting it as a well developed model that has been independently studied that includes additional capacity and that is intentionally designed to measure actual performance and adjust when real operating experience tells us something different. And that's when we do the review after implementation. The usable Saratoga data workload year was 2025. Extrapolating some data to be able to do this assessment, yes, did have its challenges. And there were limitations in some of the source data. So actual performance after implementation has to validate the assumptions we are making today. The bottom line from Meliora and from our own planning is that this model is supportable, but only with adding a staffing, appropriate relief, deliberate deployment, and continuing review that we've discussed tonight. What I've described so far is how we believe the service can be delivered operationally and responsibly. I'm starkly aware that the fiscal component of this proposal is necessary to both maintain current service levels to enhance our department's strength and availability of resources for a more resilient public safety system. So if both councils ultimately decide to move forward, the next phase becomes the steps of how we responsibly get from a plan on paper to an organization that is actually ready to provide that service. That is why there's the one year implementation plan that you also saw in a lot of this information of the staff report and Meliora as well. For Los Gatos, this partnership means an even stronger department with a more sustainable fiscal future. For Saratoga, a more local police department with full municipal police services and a proven community policing model. And with that, I will turn it over to Administrative Service Director, Christina Alfaro, to review some of the fiscal cost modeling components.

Thank you, Chief. If we can go to the next slide. And so, in the next few slides that I'll be presenting what we're thinking, we're actually going to break down the cost associated with the model, how that model was built and tested and then go over some potential current and next fiscal year impacts. So, 1st, is we have a total cost of 9.7 to 9Million annualized and we built that really based on 2 components. 1 is the annual ongoing cost and the 2nd is the amortized startup cost. The startup costs are currently estimated at about 3.37Million, but are expected to be amortized over a 10 year agreement. The annual ongoing costs are broken out into 3 different what we refer to as pillars. First is the direct service of almost $5 million, and this is really the cost to hire the 16 1⁄2 positions that the Chief has mentioned throughout her presentation. This is the direct cost for salaries, benefits related to those positions. Next is Pillar B, which is readiness and relief, which is effectively the needs to have leave relief and other items as the police services are a 24-7 operation. Followed by just shy of 2Million for the municipal platform. Once you have the people, the ability to run a 24 hour operation and support that operation. This is the technology and equipment and contracts that may be needed to administer that contract and the expanded service area. D becomes that amortized costs, and really what this takes into account is we cannot simply flip a switch and add the services. As the Chief mentioned in her portion of the presentation, we want to ensure we have the capacity first before we're able to launch the new services. And this is really indicative of the hire ahead that's necessary and the other pieces of equipment and things that need to be necessary for us to be operational at the start of the contract period. Again, in total for the first of what would be potentially a first full year would be 9.729 million. And the next slide. Here we're going to break down a little bit further kind of what built the model. So the model was built in-house by staff. However, the model was then tested independently by Matrix Consulting, who is known for completing fee studies, cost allocation plans, and has actually done also some staffing studies for police agencies throughout the country. And so what we did first, the foundation was really the Meliora study. That kicked everything off. It kind of got us started on the number of positions that we may need. It defined the scope of service. And then what we did is we built on that. And this really was a town-wide effort. Once we had that foundation, we needed to determine what additional support services would be necessary. And I do want to point out these are direct cost only. There is no overhead included in this. As we built this model, the focus was what do we need in additional should we bring on this expanded service? And that was really one of the caveats as we were building every piece of this model. We worked with other service providing departments throughout the town to build up what they thought would be necessary to be able to support the new model. Again, no overhead is included in our numbers. And then what we did is we had matrix test that model and they reviewed our model. They gave us suggestions. We made edits from input to format to the numbers that were included in here. Matrix was truly a partner with us. I have a whole new. level of appreciation for folks who build cost allocation models and fee schedules because it is quite complex and involved. But at the end result was that they validated our model. The model concluded only the direct cost necessary to provide the services. And so with that, I want to talk a little bit about potential fiscal impacts in the current in the next fiscal year. And if we go to that next slide. And really this is broken out in think of this slide is cut in half the top portion of the slide or the portion that that adds to the seven point three eight one million. This is potential cost for fiscal year twenty seven twenty eight. It assumes a nine month period with an October first potential start date. And so these costs are simply. equivalent of that nine-month period. The ongoing costs are a little over $7 million, and then the $337,000 are reflective of the first of 10 installments for the startup costs. When you look at the startup funding controls, think of this really related to that 337,000. This is basically the 3.37 million that would be necessary to spend, we think. Again, these are estimates for the first year startup cost. that we think are necessary to spend to hire ahead, have the equipment in place, any contracts that would need to be in place in the current fiscal year, so fiscal year 26, 27, again, to be ready for an October 1st start date. And what we're looking at is, first thing would be getting approval of the contract, ensuring we have the authority to spend any additional dollars that are necessary in the current fiscal year. start spending and tracking those dollars, and then looking to recover the first year of those costs with the contract in 27-28, which brings us back to the beige colored box at the $337,000. Effectively, that completes my portion of the presentation related to the model and the financial impacts. And with that, I'll turn it over to our town manager, Chris Constantine.

Thank you, Christina. I want to stay on this slide for a little bit more. The city of Saratoga recently entered into a five-year agreement with the county to continue law enforcement services with a one-year exit provision to preserve their option to opt out and consider an alternative model such as ours. In terms of the startup cost, the 337,000 is the ceiling. We've identified all the different aspects of cost that need to incur, but we still have to reconcile the actual costs incurred leading up to any start date should Saratoga request that we provide the service. And so therefore, that number will come back as a separate agreement of what that startup cost is and its amortization. There is also interest attached to that number. So the future cost will be that number plus the simple interest, which reflects what our current investment rate would be in life, which is are the account that we hold most of our liquid cash. So that the town would also be recovering the cost of capital for providing this upfront amortization of that dollar amount that makes it more affordable and consistent for the city of Saratoga to endure. In terms of, we talked about the Meliora study which looked at what's it going to take to do the transition, how are we deploying those resources, and then we looked at staff's developed model validated by Meliora for its compliance with the government code on how do you actually fund that transition study, but really the relationship between the jurisdictions, currently the ones we have with Monteserino, and what would potentially be Saratoga's if they ask us to take this on, is really codified in the 50 page agreement that you currently have before you. While we're asking for you to bless the structure, that isn't necessarily going to be the final agreement. Saratoga will be sunshining this agreement just like we are tonight. They will be engaging in additional community meetings and additional council meetings. And in the intervening time, there may be changes while we're continuing to work with them if that's the direction the council takes tonight that we should be continuing to work with them. And in that agreement, part of the reason why it is so detailed and so long was we're looking at forming a true partnership and having a relationship that is durable, one that has enough specificity so those that are here 10, 20, 30 years from now that are asking what are we supposed to be doing, why are we doing it, can look to the agreement and have that codified, but also provide enough flexibility so that the contract is not inflexible So that should something occur or circumstances change, we can grow and we can adapt around that agreement. And so there is quite a number of safeguards in the agreement. And those safeguards are spread across the entire agreement, which leads to having more complexity to try to understand. It's not as straightforward to look at one provision and now you know everything there is to be about that section. There may be other sections that play into that first section that impact what's supposed to occur. For Saratoga, one of the issues of greatest concern, which would be a concern that I would have for Los Gatos if the roles were reversed, is predictability of cost. They currently have faced a very significant increase in cost. That is not something that governments typically plan for. We tend to like a more progressive approach, a consistent increase if something is going to go up so we can project. and budget and know what the trade-off decisions are between funding one resource versus another. When that cost goes up 20, 30, 40%, it's very hard, especially when you look at such a central service and a large dollar amount to be able to plan for the future and understand, can you provide the level of service in a critical function such as public safety for your community? And so what we built in is very tight cost controls, Controls that also included mutual agreements between us and Saratoga in terms of those costs. Some of those provisions require the town of Los Gatos to look at what is the driver of that cost? Is there an alternative that could reduce or mitigate that cost and then a meet and confer process with the city of Saratoga so that we're. willing partners through the process and that cost is not ballooning and coming and hitting one of the jurisdictions years later. You can see it progress. In terms of the town of Los Gatos, we are required to pass the actual cost of service To the jurisdiction in 2016, a law passed and codifying the government code specified that you are to provide that actual cost and that you are not to charge what's considered general overhead or that cost that you would incur otherwise, if you didn't enter into this agreement. And so we worked painstakingly in implementing the financial model that addresses and complains and aligns with that cost. Meliora did the transition study, but Matrix was looking at the alignment of our financial model with the government code. And while we drafted the agreement internally, we had the agreement independently reviewed by outside counsel, Michael Coulentano, who was one of the foremost firms that deals with financial matters. And we had Mr. Coulentano himself review this contract. and help us ensure that we had alignment with the government code so that the agreement facilitates what the law requires and the flexibility we needed to have a durable partnership. And so there's a number of provisions that ensure that we're able to recover our cost. And in the cases where we establish caps or restrictions, should the government code be triggered that we need to incur additional cost recovery, there is options to be able to do so in partnership with the city of Saratoga. In any relationship, currently the city of Saratoga has a contractual relationship with the county. This is more of Saratoga being a customer of the county. We're looking in the different model we're providing to be true partners. And in a true partnership, the needs and priorities of Of Saratoga are very important. So the question that's paramount for a governing body should be how do we ensure that the priorities or needs that we have are conveyed. To our partners who are providing the actual service. And so that 1st, that policy priorities comes from councils who set the policies through the town manager in our case, or the city manager in Saratoga's case, who is the CEO of the organization. They convey that to a liaison that they will have such just like Monte Serino has a liaison for which they will have some input as to which captain would be the one servicing Saratoga in this initial implementation. And then that would be conveyed to the town manager in chief of Los Gatos who will actually go out and implement that program. In the agreement, law enforcement or public safety isn't just police services and enforcement. There are a lot of other aspects to the services. It may involve traffic calming and engineering fixes on roadways. It may involve municipal code changes and resolutions that approve red zones and things of the like. Saratoga will retain the responsibility as it pertains to the public works related activities, including traffic calming. We will retain the enforcement and public safety aspect of traffic control, ie a traffic officer or a patrol officer doing that enforcement and all the other law enforcement services. We are also the employer of all the police officers. None of our employees will become employees of the city of Saratoga should we enter into this relationship. And so there's a lot of consideration of the requirements and exposures that we take as the employer and protecting the town in the implementation and ability to run the department as needed. In terms of the engagement, And ensuring the performance of the system, the next slide, if I can get this clicker to actually click it over. The clerk could do it for us. There's a number of ways, there's actually more than three ways for Saratoga and our partner city Monteserino to have the ability to see performance. We will continue to do the two year performance reviews or the presentations to the governing bodies. Currently the council here receives that and Monteserino receives the same presentation. There is also, what's not documented here, one formal meeting of the managers that get together to review the past year's performance. Our practice currently with Monte Sereno has been that the managers meet monthly, and my intention is if Saratoga asks us to provide the service, that the three managers would meet monthly in addition to that annual meeting to see the progress and performance that's occurring. In the case that there is some more formality to the item that we're discussing, there's an ability to do a management review that could be formally requested and a response provided within 14 days. And then I think the signature piece that's very important is the establishment of a law enforcement public partnership or advisory committee. That committee would be a Brown Act committee of six council members, two from each jurisdiction, that would be the voting advisory members of that committee with the three town and city managers and the police chief, where they would meet quarterly to review anything and everything related to the partnership. Operations, data, activity, deployment, changes, costs, future cost increase, grants that we may wanna consider doing together. and offers the opportunity for governing bodies to have a far stronger say, albeit it's not a direction because we will not, it isn't prudent to allow somebody in another jurisdiction to direct the work of employees of our town, just like the council can't direct the employees directly in our own town. but it offers a tremendous opportunity to give perspective and direction that helps us course correct and change to continue what truly should be a partnership between the three jurisdictions. And like any partnership, it's like a family, and families have disagreements. And so one of the aspects of the contracts that we were very cognizant of is when we have a disagreement, it shouldn't be one that triggers all about legal action between, or the only option is termination immediately if we disagree. And so what's internal to the contract is a multi-layered dispute resolution process that starts informally between the managers. So concerns are discussed between the managers and if it can't be addressed, can be elevated to a more formal meet and confer process. And if the meet and confer process can't result in a resolution to the issue, The next step would take it to a mediated process where a mediator would be brought in to help the parties negotiate and navigate the challenges and find a win-win opportunity to resolve it. And if the mediator isn't able to help us to get to resolution, there is a non-binding arbitration that occurs where the arbiter would make a decision which side has the stronger veracity in this case. They would effectively be determining In the dispute between two parties, who am I siding with that's more right in the situation or has the more appropriate approach to implement? And the direction would be to the other party that the arbiter doesn't side for has time to determine whether they're going to implement that fix that's been recommended through the arbiter. And if that decision isn't taken, then there is a six month trigger that the other party has to terminate in six months versus the 12 month termination clause that we currently have. And so there are a lot of layers before you get to a potential conclusion. But I will say, given the other controls, we have the advisory committee of council members, the engagements monthly between the managers. I find it hard to think that we would get to a point where we get to the end and aren't able to find some resolution that retains the durability of a partnership. And what's very important is we still preserve Los Gatos right to operate the department. So nothing becomes a directive that would drive the activity and the operations. However, the agreement does have other provisions that if there are changes that are fundamental or meaningful that we incur that there are meet and confers with the other jurisdiction, including Monte Serino. With the change that's going to occur, I mean, this is no different than if there was a fatal death in our community that we would provide notifications to each other. If there is a change in leadership due to a retirement of a police chief, we would be notifying the other jurisdiction. Or if we're changing something operation that can impact cost materially operations materially that we would be notified in meeting and conferring with our partner city. On the next slide, we have a timeline. Currently, if the city of Saratoga decides and takes action to want to proceed and request us to consider a finalized agreement and partnership, that they would be providing notice to the county of that termination if they so choose. And then it starts the timeline on our part for a one year implementation to get to implementing this program, which is currently slated to be October 1st. That could potentially change to November 1st if the city of Saratoga makes a decision later, or it could be an alternate date. We're really just, in terms of the recommendation we have before you, Looking to continue the discussions, blessing the framework and the structure of what we have, but still working with the city of Saratoga to come up with what are their needs, how do we best serve those, and when they ask us to formally consider approval of this, to come back to the council for formal consideration of authorizing an agreement, and then proceeding after that action with implementing that. And so I want to make clear that what your approval of the resolution today is not authorizing us to enter into an agreement. It's having reviewed the structure of the Meliora transition study, having reviewed the financial model, and having reviewed the agreement that the structure of this partnership of focusing on a level of service and the types of partnership provisions that we have to maintain what could be a very win-win long-term relationship with Saratoga and with Monte Serino being a three city partnership that is operating more like one big city focused on the needs of our three jurisdictions. And then we will continue that conversation with Saratoga and then come back to council. With that, I will turn it back to the mayor.

Thank you very much for the thorough presentation. Much appreciated and lots of detail. So I will turn to the council for questions. I'll go to council member Hudes, then council member Rennie.

I have one. Quick, I think simple question. We heard a lot about Flock and ALPR earlier tonight. Who would decide whether Flock or other ALPR devices would be utilized in Saratoga?

The current agreement does not include flock as an assured addition. We're open to that. What is in the agreement is a framework for any technology and how we will consider it. Starting with how we want to integrate it into our systems because we want to look at security and the controls and the rest first. And after we make the decision to say yes to, let's say in this case, flock. That if we intend to terminate a relationship with that technology, that there is a meet and confer process. We don't just unilaterally shut it off because we choose to do so. We would be engaging the jurisdiction.

And so if I could follow up on that, from the perspective of Saratoga, it would be Saratoga's decision, correct? The Saratoga Council, which is elected by the residents of Saratoga.

Correct. Saratoga, if they approve this agreement, Saratoga would then be asking us to take on their flock cameras, and we would enter into a separate agreement related to that camera system.

So if they wanted to, they would ask us to do that.

Correct.

And my understanding is that in the current situation, the council in Saratoga does not make that decision. That decision is made by the county sheriff, and it's decided by the county, not by the residents and the council of Saratoga.

That is a good distinction the city of Saratoga has a number of assessment districts where residents pay for those cameras and Those cameras while they're under contract with the city of Saratoga the access and ability to monitor that is at the discretion of the county through the sheriff and my understanding is the county has prohibited that access for those slot cameras and so the decision about

whether to use flock would be a local control decision for saratoga councilman bernie thank you councilmember hudis actually covered my first question i have two more for now the first one may be somewhat simple so we're going to have a workspace in saratoga you've clearly defined a captain that's going to be assigned towards overseeing the whole Saratoga and there's some other staff that may be just Saratoga or maybe some of both. I'm curious though, particularly I think for patrol, are you going to rotate officers through so that everybody gets a chance to know Saratoga or is there just going to be one that's always got to be over there in Saratoga and maybe not as connected to their fellow officers here in Los Gatos?

So thank you for the question. Very similar to how we operate here in servicing the areas of Los Gatos and Monteserino, it's rotational. All of our officers, our professional staff, they all know Los Gatos and Monteserino. It would be the same if we were to add on a third partnering community. That would be rotational. The briefing would occur currently over at our operations building. That's where our patrol briefings occur. And once that briefing is completed, then whatever officer is assigned to, in this case it would be a beat one and beat four, would head that direction and operate primarily out of that workspace over there. Including the school resource officer and motor officer that would likely also brief with the team as well. Including community service officers, they would operate as well out of that space. But always starting, loading up the vehicles, getting the materials, and starting at our operations building here. But it would be rotational. depending on the sergeant and whatever operational needs there might be.

Okay, thank you. Second question, probably a little harder to answer, is around hiring standards. A lot of the bad things you hear in the news in other departments is often about perhaps officers that didn't have quite the right mentality or personality for the job and I know since you've taken over you've put a strong focus on hiring the right kind of officers for Los Gatos. I would call that more caretakers and less warrior kinds of people. Some locations may need more warriors. I always like to use that comparison. One concern might be we need to hire a number of officers. Are we going to keep up our hiring standards and make sure we keep getting the caretaker kind of officers that enjoy engaging with the community in positive ways, not in looking forward to a fight down at the bar kind of officer?

I think you're kind of referencing the fit for our department and for our community, and that really embraces the community policing model. So the answer is absolutely. We have not dropped our standards. We continue to have high standards. We currently have three officers in training that we anticipate getting off of training in October, I believe. And we have a individual that will be graduating the police academy next week, and then another person that will be starting the following week. And I'm excited for our upcoming swearing in, where I believe we have eight that will be recognized there, both for promotional purposes and new additions to our team. And that will be on September 29th in this room. But to answer your question, we're doing quite well in the hiring space. By the end of this year, I anticipate that we'll probably be if not fully staffed, one or two away from fully staffed in the sworn space of things. We still have a little bit of work to do, retirements and moves and such on the professional side, but I think that's normal for any organization. So the standard will stay high. I anticipate that we will have Good momentum and good recruitment and outreach, but I do believe that it is so critical for especially a small organization such as this that we maintain our credibility and trust through assuring high standards of those that join our team and that there is a very robust hiring process that occurs to vet appropriately.

Thank you. Sounds good. Mayor, that's all for now. Thank you. I'll go to Council Member Badami.

Thank you, Mayor. So following up on that, we got a desk item from a finance commissioner and it talks about some risks that may be involved from the town zone cost and staffing. So they address maybe a hiring shortfall where maybe you're not able to hire these officers because we are very picky and understandably so, and I'm glad we are. But what if we don't get these officers and staff hired by October 1st of 2027? What kind of remedy do we have from that? We just operate not as fully staffed as we hope to be?

Well, I would hope council members are ready to have a badge and a gun and we'll send you over to Saratoga.

Okay.

No, that's all in jest. If you take a look at the Meliora transition study, it's 36 in the study, 334 in the agenda packet. There are two charts, what they call the rule of 60 charts. What is rule of 60? Rule of 60 is a deployment methodology that's been promulgated and reviewed by the International City Managers Association. And it states that you should tend to want to be no more than 60% of the time on a consistent basis busy. To allow for the ability for emergency and flexibility and proactive calls for anything above that that can get you up to 100%. There are times that our officers are all super busy on a shift, but that's not the case on a consistent basis every hour, every day. And so the charts that you will see have an hour by hour breakdown that show you the level of activity for actual on calls and then administrative time and other aspects of that. and so we overlay with that or meliora did the additional workload associated with the city of saratoga and on the top chart it's adding saratoga's workload with no additional officers added to our current deployments and to the bottom chart it's with the recommended additional officers if nothing happened And we had no additional officers. According to that study, it shows that we will exceed the rule of 60 during the middle day hours, but we would be below 80%, which means there is still capacity to respond to emergency and proactive calls. but we would be working at a higher operational tempo. I don't anticipate us starting October 1st with no additional officers, but if you wanted to look at what's the worst-case scenario that you can't fill additional ones, I can see from Eliora that while we'll be a lot busier, we can still handle the calls for service.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. I just have a quick question before the break. So I appreciate this is a, I think, a creative solution to a variety of issues, I think, for both municipalities. And so I think it's very good that we are continuing to explore this relationship. I'll just emphasize, and I think both the chief and the manager did, that this is not an approval. This does not guarantee an outcome. This is to proceed in a direction and with an opportunity. I think the just high-level question I'll ask is that I think the most important thing to Los Gatos residents that I've heard about this relationship is that it's of the utmost importance that any new partnership does not negatively impact the residents of Los Gatos in our current service model, which is exceptional. And so you touched on this, but can you just share how you – you know, anticipate this impacting our current service in Los Gatos and anything you do to mitigate any negative impacts?

So there's a few different approaches that I'll take to that. One of them in terms of for Los Gatos, we are starting all services here in terms of the briefing. All resources are starting out of our operations building before expanding the model. Expanding the model means that the staff would then respond over to the workspace over there within Saratoga for the operational day to day. It still means that we still have our records counter, we still have our dispatch located here. The calls for service for three communities would all come into our dispatch center here. Our records station would still be here. Anybody that might need release of evidence or property assistance would still be located here. However, we would still have a liaison to all three of the communities with Montessori don't have any captain liaison specific, liaison specific for Saratoga as well, just to maintain that continuity. As it pertains to here, specific to your question, we still have the majority, the meat of our resources located here. And this expands our depth of resources, which I mentioned about quite a bit. So when we have six officers assigned during a day, that means that Los Gatos has six officers potentially available in the event that there's a significant incident. It means Monteserino has that. It means Saratoga has that as well. Should we need to also, during moments of surge, we can also rely on pulling from our detective bureau should we need. We have done that from time to time. We also partner quite well with all of our surrounding jurisdictions. We help them, they help us when we need further assistance as well. That partnership, the mutual aid stays consistent, none of that changes at all. We have designed this in a way that we can fluctuate or flow to wherever those needs might be and then fall back to the beat integrity that I talked about. We don't anticipate with this model that there would be any change whatsoever and that is absolutely the commitment and the goal in this model. And that's the importance of the reviews and the reassessment towards the end and the measurements to assure that we are meeting the goals of 5, 10, and 15 minutes for those priority calls. We're not changing the classifications of the priority calls. So we have measurements that we can use that are in place to be able to reassure that that is what's happening once the implementation were to occur.

And I can say from the city manager's perspective, I'm reviewing a lot of data that comes out of the police department, response times and whatnot. And if I'm seeing anything that changes, we're constantly in communication and engagement. And so in a nutshell to your question, are we watering down the services to Los Gatos by entering into an agreement with Saratoga? The answer is the way the transition study has been built is no. We're expanding and adding to be able to service them. And we all will mutually benefit by the capacity that we retain in the system with the city of Monteserino having even more officers that can service Monteserino and the city of Saratoga still retaining all our officers should the need arise.

Great. Thank you very much. Yeah.

Thank you. I appreciate the presentation and all of the ongoing work that's been going on for quite a few months. I think one of the things that people are sometimes surprised by, especially before they hear a presentation like this, is if we're taking on Saratoga, which is essentially the same population as Los Gatos and about the same area, that we don't have to double our police department. We don't need two police departments to do this. One of the things that struck me was if we have eight dispatch workers or dispatchers, we don't need another eight to handle Saratoga. So can you talk me through like how we use the capacity that we already have and you know the coverage through the day and how we know that we only have to add one and a half dispatchers?

In terms of the specifics, I would have to refer to one of the pages within the Meliora report. But they do a breakdown in terms of the calls for service and also assessing the calls for service that we're able to take a look at during the 2025 data that was received. So they did a measurement based on that to look at what the call volume was in Saratoga and what the capacity is within our abilities here and what's kind of standard across the industry. In doing some of those measurements, that's where they're able to literally work through the mathematical equation that's referenced in there to be able to come to that recommended 2.5. We talked to Meliora about the 1.5 and starting it with incremental measurements to be able to adjust if necessary. In terms of detective work, that was the other one I said, conversely, we actually did move forward. Measuring detective work is extremely difficult because the time that's spent on a call for one agency or on an investigation for one agency could be much different. That standard of review, assessment, and follow up might be different from agency to agency. And so we talk through how can we measure even that. We are constantly, I meet with my management team monthly. We are measuring what our different performances are, clear down to how many cases are we sending to the DA's office? How many cases are being cleared? So we're constantly looking at those performances. I mentioned audits, but we're always going through measurements to assure that our standards are not fluctuating significantly. And I do communicate those with our town manager as well.

Let me add, I want to do this by way of example. The National Institute of Standards and Training has defined for a residential fire, you need 21 firefighters. So if a city deployed and hired firefighters and built stations, they would have to build it to combat fire. So you would have a lot of firefighters to be ready to address a residential fire. But how often does a residential fire happen in a community? It's not that often. So you would have a tremendous amount of resource at a very high price sitting idle. And so the fire departments got smart and they took on medical and search and rescue so that it can fill capacity. What do we have? We have a large geographic area of a little over 10 square miles here and a little under 12 square miles for Saratoga. And our level of activity is not Oakland, LA, San Francisco, San Jose. And so we have a high quality resource and the levels of activities aren't necessarily at that operational tempo. We also know that a burglary in Los Gatos doesn't necessarily happen at the exact same time of burglary in Monte Serena or Saratoga. And so there's a timing difference. And so what you end up with is a certain amount of capacity where I have to staff at a certain level, and there's a certain capacity or availability that I can deploy somewhere else at an ability to be able to respond within the response times. And so what we were looking at in terms of Meliora study is trying to define the level of service for all three communities that meet the 5, 10, 15 and the quality levels that we currently provide to Monteserino and Los Gatos and determine how many more do I need to retain that system-wide knowing that the officer I'll put in Saratoga, the two officers for the differing beats, Doesn't necessarily mean that you're the only ones responding to a Saratoga call or a Los Gatos officer. You're only responding to Los Gatos calls. We're responding to the entire system with a target of response time and quality. And we can do that. In terms of the investigative side, the chief mentioned we deviated a little bit on investigations and we deviated a little bit on the dispatch side. On the investigation sides, we erred on adding an additional resource. albeit the data not necessarily saying you needed to add it. Why? The chief won't say this, but I've seen the results. We do an exceptionally good job in our investigations that lead to a high closure rate or a high success rate with the district attorney's office. It takes time, it takes dedication, it takes resources. So if we're going to enter into a partnership, you have the immediate response, but a more serious case requires investigation. I do not want to end up in a situation, nor does the chief, where we have cases that come in for Saratoga and we don't give it that level of quality. If we find down the road that there's way more resource in detectives, we could revisit it at that 12 to 18 month and maybe remove a vacant position and lower the cost. But that's critically important to maintain that quality for all three of our communities.

Thank you, I appreciate that and I'm glad you brought. I just wanted to add on that a little bit when it comes to investigations. It's my understanding that a lot of the cases that may need follow up an investigation within Saratoga may not necessarily be persons crimes. That they are identity theft, property crime, burglary related. A lot of times there might be trends that come with that and there's significant investigations and search warrants that come with that as well. It's not just something where we can go out and go interview somebody. It's really looking for the whodunit and connecting the different cases and the trends and doing the follow-up that sometimes takes us even outside of the area. Our detectives are extremely well-talented and well-networked, so they communicate throughout the Bay Area. We know that it doesn't just stop at county lines, that it goes It goes much further north, much further south, and we've even traveled into other states to do follow up. I'm extremely impressed with their work, but it does take that diligence and time. So we wanted to make sure that we could commit that to this partnership and not under deliver. I would rather over deliver, especially in starting a partnership, just like town manager said, that would be durable and have the trust.

Thank you. I mean, I know from other residents and for myself that having an officer there, you know, the response time is important. Solving cases is critical. And, you know, I appreciate the high solver right in Los Gatos. The other question I have, which is more toward the financial end, which might be for Christina, is, I know it went through this, but I just want to highlight it. With the startup cost to Saratoga, if we're amortizing the startup cost over 10 years, Is that a startup cost that isn't all up front? We're not gonna be out $3.7 million in year one, are we? Or how are we gonna pay for that and how do we recover that?

We would be incurring that cost and are because some of the capacity comes from the existing 39 officers that we're filling, that we weren't filling before. And so, yes, we will be recovering that over the course of the next three years. And we've looked at our budget and I think Christina will be presenting the numbers from the last fiscal year that shows a pretty significant net positive change to our fund balance.

Okay. I mean, as we're hiring, the salaries are ongoing. Correct. But so it's more that upfront just to get going and we're.

We can't just start October 1st and we instantly jump all the, everybody's there and we're ready to go. We didn't incur a cost. You have to start in advance. The concern for us is if we couldn't financially afford it, we would be having a different conversation. We can financially afford it. And in the meanwhile, up until October 1st, we will be benefiting from that additional capacity that we're deploying internally. In some cases, they're in the academy, they're training, and they're not necessarily on patrol. In other cases, once they're released into patrol, they're servicing our community of Monteserino and Los Gatos.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Okay. Oh, yep. Council Member Rennie, and then we're going to take a quick break.

Yeah, thank you. I wanted to, since we're just talking about the item just before that last one, I wanted to follow up on it, which goes to one of the questions that was referenced. There was a sheet from the Finance Commission member that talks about actual workload exceeds the model. And it seems like you just... To rest my concern on that and you can help me my reading of the report Was you your model? Has analyzed the work in Saratoga with but there's sort of was one big unknown and that was the investigations Because it wasn't well documented by the sheriff, but other kinds of things of calls. They were all documented so I got the impression that that was really the big unknown that might be more work than we said. But I just heard you say in your model you've already overestimated that. You erred on the you're probably less work than you're staffing for, shall I say. So I think that addresses this concern, but am I correct in understanding that that was really the big unknown and you've erred on the side of making sure it's covered in the model?

Absolutely. And speaking with community members from Saratoga and also some of the staff in the electeds over there, there was concern about some of the property-based crimes, as I had mentioned, and wanting to make sure that we had the resources to educate, inform, and listen to the community. Should... Should we have completely underestimated the need, then that's a resource that we can use to be proactive in making sure to try to curb some of the concerns of some of those scams, doing the outreach, helping with our community relations. I don't anticipate that we'll have underestimated it because I do believe that there's probably a number of cases that can be investigated. And we don't know how calls might change when there's a different service delivery model. Calls may even increase. We don't know. We just have to anticipate and be prepared for that and be able to pivot as needed. But we did anticipate that we will be needing that resource. If we need to be adaptable with how that resource is utilized, we can certainly do that as well.

And I think the comment from the finance commissioner is broader. So on the detective side, we erred on the additional resource exactly to the point the chief raised. On the patrol side, the data, we worked and provided guidance to Saratoga who did a public records request of the county to get three years worth of data that we could use to analyze. When we received that data through Saratoga, which was all the data Saratoga received, milliora found a number of issues with the data there was only one year where the full data set was available and there were partial sets for the other years and so milliora had to work to reconstruct based on other alternative data sources to come up with what are what are the activity levels and then to utilize our experience for example what is the response to domestic violence call take for los gatos presume that's what it's going to take for saratoga Even though the sheriff is responding now, but we would be responding potentially tomorrow to come up with the numbers Even that there even the concern related to the data truly accurate or are we going to experience a much higher level? There is a provision in the contract that allows us to reopen if what actually comes out that the data was far off So we can have that conversation with Saratoga. How do we grapple with that? I? So from the risk exposure of saying we just bought into an arrangement, if we sign on and the data is much, much higher now, Los Gatos has to bear the cost of that. There is an option, an off road to be able to address that. We don't believe it will be necessary. We believe the data that we have is accurate and correct. And we have flexibility, as I mentioned before, on what Miller already says, if we didn't add additional officers that with some of the additional officers, we'd be able to handle it if that situation did occur. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. It is 913. We're going to take about a 10 minute break and then we'll go straight to public comment. Apologies for making our members of the public wait so long to speak to us. So you'll be on at just about 925. Thank you.

30 seconds so please grab a seat.

We're going to return to our meeting and get started with public comment. I am, because we have more than 10 speaker cards, I am going to limit the time to two minutes, not three minutes. I hope that is not too disruptive to your comments. And we will begin with Louisa Horvath. And Louisa will be followed by Jonathan Knowles.

Good evening, council members. My name is Louisa Horwath, and I am a senior attending Los Gatos High School. It is my understanding that combining the Los Gatos police force with Saratoga has the potential to reactivate around 100 flock cameras, which are AI-powered surveillance cameras that capture license plates on cars as you drive by. These cameras save information and continue to recognize vehicles every time they pass, creating a log of citizens' daily routine that local law enforcement, federal agencies, and more can access. Block cameras allow the corporate data holders to track where citizens live, work, who they drive with, where they worship, and more without any warrant or court order. The Los Gatos police claim to delete flock data after 30 days unless it is being used to investigate behavior. The police have also claimed that since data is not shared nationwide, it is much safer and less of a risk for citizens. However, the ACLU said, and this is a direct quote, even when a police department chooses in flock's application to restrict data access to its own officers, the template agreement gives flock the right to disclose the local police department's data both to law enforcement nationwide and federal agencies for investigative purposes. This means that despite the police's claim that Los Gatos' data is not shared nationwide, there is still the threat of Flock taking the recordings and data. Furthermore, the Los Gatos Police Department is yet to publish a direct statistic proving a decrease in crime due specifically to these cameras. While the police say that Flock cameras are investigational tools, is any cost worth the risk to individual privacy? Towns such as Santa Cruz, Mountain View, and more have banned or restricted flock. However, Los Gatos continues to partner and allow flock in our town without any type of restriction, and combining with Saratoga will just multiply the already terrifying risk of these cameras. On a more personal note, I am a high schooler and I've watched AI progress as I've gone through school, and who knows where it's going next. I asked some of my friends to come in public comment with me tonight to demonstrate the level of concern the youth has for this issue. AI has progressed exponentially in the past few years, and I honestly don't feel that my data is safe. I don't want to grow up in a town that doesn't protect my privacy. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, Council Member Hudes, Louisa, we have one question for you.

Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to ask if you realized that under this arrangement, Saratoga would make the decision about whether to utilize flaw cameras or to turn them off. It would not be Los Gatos decision.

It is my understanding that this is a partnership between both Los Gatos and Saratoga. And so Los Gatos' police departments would be the one accessing these flaw camera data. And so I think this very much does concern Los Gatos and the Los Gatos Town Council, just because it would be Los Gatos police accessing this data.

Okay, thank you. Jonathan Knowles. My name is Jonathan Knowles and I've served as the President and Chairman of the Board of the Los Gatos Monteserino Police Foundation for 24 years. I'm here tonight because of what this initiative means beyond policing services. It brings Saratoga's residents and businesses into our police foundation's community as well. Just as regional public safety brings real benefits, regional community connection and participation in public safety brings benefits that are just as powerful. That means more than it might sound. Public safety isn't just officers, cars, and budgets. It's the relationship between a community and the people who protect it. That's why our foundation exists, to build a bridge between residents, local businesses, and our police department, and to give everyone a voice in public safety, whether or not they can give financially. We have a free level of membership because participation matters as much as funding. As an innovation partner with the town, we built a long and well-documented partnership that results speak for themselves. A drone program that gives officers eyes in the sky for search and rescue and community events, canine and therapy dog programs, investigative tools that let our detectives protect kids from online predators, our school resource officers, specialized training, our dart teams, police explorers, and so much more, all made possible because residents choose to stay engaged, not just writing a check. Looking at what Chief Field and the town manager, Chris Constantine, are working out with Saratoga, full patrol investigations, traffic enforcement, school resource officers, dispatch, community outreach, a complete service, not a scaled down one, a local presence so officers can stay accessible and rooted in the community. This initiative, of course, will not in any way diminish service here in our community. The opposite is true. A bigger, stronger, better resource department with more redundancy, more capability, and importantly, a broader community standing behind it. This partnership doesn't just help Saratoga. It makes all three of our communities better together. Thank you.

We'll go to Kirstie Morrell. Oh, she is not here. And then we'll go to Sophia. I'm so sorry, I can't read your last name. Lozano.

Hi, so I'm also here with Luisa, and I'm also here to comment on Flock. Even though it's not necessarily an issue that concerns Los Gatos, I believe that it does concern our police department. So, I am a Los Gatos high school senior, and I was recently made aware of the issue of Flock in Los Gatos, and how this potential partnership could potentially reactivate cameras in Saratoga. I wouldn't be surprised if most of our town isn't aware of the 17 flock surveillance cameras located in various areas in Los Gatos and the many more present in Saratoga that are currently deactivated. Here, hundreds of Los Gatos residents pass by these license plate reading surveillance cameras every day. Just on my way to school, I pass by two different flock cameras that record my license plate and save information about my movements to flock databases. Block claims not to record faces, just license plates. But the ACLU also notes that private information can be fed into AI platforms that make the tracking of personal information, such as daily routines, possible. Although these cameras are supposedly designed to help reduce crime, many cases have exemplified a blatant abuse of these cameras. In Rhode Island, a woman was recently arrested when law officials in a police chase misidentified their suspect. In San Jose, as we have heard today, an officer was allegedly fired for sharing data on a flock camera with a suspect. In particularly vivid cases, flock data has been shared with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 404 Media notes that while Flock does not automatically grant access to ICE, local law enforcement agencies can do so. This blatant misuse of technology demonstrates the inherent issues with Flock surveillance cameras and demonstrates the importance of placing restrictions on Flock cameras in both Los Gatos and Saratoga, especially in light of this possible partnership. It's the responsibility of our community to protect its residents' privacy and well-being by taking these risks into account. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to Guy. Guy, I'm so sorry. I also can't read your last name. Shaham? Nice.

Good evening. My name is Guy Shaham, and I'm a senior at Los Gatos High School. I want to preface this statement by saying that I am not against extending the Los Gatos Monteserino police force to Saratoga. I honestly think it's a positive step forward. However, I think this item is misleading in nature. What is being proposed is not just the extension of a police force, but the extension of ALPRs into Saratoga. Our town's police force already directly utilizes 17 flock cameras just in the Los Gatos town alone. Extending our police force to Saratoga would most likely reactivate up to 100 ALPRs in Saratoga. In the earlier presentation, it was said that ALPRs are useful and valuable pieces of technology. However, the Los Gatos Monteserino Police Force does not share data on how accurate ALPRs are in identifying suspects or the amount of investigations they have been used in. Because this information isn't public, it's impossible to know the actual utility that these cameras provide. What the police force is asking is for the entire community to blindly trust their conduct concerning technology, which has famously presented issues concerning code of conduct. I'm concerned about this. Those who have spoken and will speak after me are concerned about this. The youth is concerned about this. We are being recorded, whether it be in main roads, neighborhoods, or even our downtown, and we have no way of knowing if those recordings are actually helping our community, like those who actually have access to it claim. Because of that, until there is a meaningful change in the usage of ALPRs, but more specifically, flock cameras by our police force, their jurisdiction should not be expanded. Thank you, counsel.

Thank you. Gavin Massa, who will be followed by Lucas Nash.

Hello, my name is Gavin Massa and I'm a senior as well at Los Gatos High School. I'm here tonight to call upon the Los Gatos Town Council to reject any addition and reactivation of the 112 of Saratoga's mass surveillance flock cameras. As a part of the merge of law enforcement in our towns and in the event of restriction on flock, not to replace them with acts on surveillance down the line either. Municipalities across the country have started reconsidering FLOC after reports that customer data was accessed by out-of-state agencies, including ICE, without their knowledge and in violation of California law. In Saratoga, our neighbor and proposed partner in this merger, a representative from SIREN, the Services Immigration Rights and Education Network, a San Jose-based immigration advocacy organization, told their counsel that there are documented cases of local police searching other jurisdictions' databases on behalf of immigration authorities. and that flock data flows to customs and border protection. If we merge resources with Saratoga's department, we add to that exposure. This isn't hypothetical either. In 2025, a Texas sheriff's deputy searched flocks nationwide network, roughly 83,000 cameras across nearly 6,800 separate law enforcement agencies to locate a woman suspected of having a self-administered abortion, an act that is criminalized in Texas. That single search reached into networks in states where abortion is legal, because that's how flock sharing model works. Every agency that joins can be searched by every other agency on the network. Las Gadas and Saratoga's own flock cameras feed into that same nationwide network. Then there's accuracy. Roseville, California, right here in our state, With a similar deployment, found that 71% of its flock alerts were wrong. Nationally, that error rate has meant innocent people have been held at gunpoint, arrested and in one recent Florida case, jailed for 13 days over misread plates. and I asked the council to commit, in the event of restriction on flock cameras, to not simply swap flock for Axon ALPR face recognition if this contract ends. We've seen that exact substitution happen elsewhere in cities, elsewhere cities cancel flock. Then quietly install Axon's version of the same surveillance, ending one contract only to sign a nearly identical one. Thank you. Isn't a win.

Thank you. Lucas.

Hi, my name is Lucas Nash. I am a senior at Los Gatos High School, and I think that merging in Los Gatos and Saratoga Police Department is a good idea, and I do believe that there are definitely benefits to this. However, I am entirely against expanding or even continuing to maintain Los Gatos' network of automated licensed police readers. If every single resident of Los Gatos was required to put a GPS tracker in their car, which could give the police department their location at any time, most people would probably recognize the blatant Fourth Amendment violation. In the 2012 Supreme Court, United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that placing a GPS tracker does constitute a search and requires a judicial warrant. There's also a Supreme Court case, Carpenter v. United States, in which in order to get location data from one's phone provided by a cell provider, the police department would also need a judicial warrant. Justice Roberts of the Supreme Court stated on this case, because location is continuously logged for all 400 million devices in the United States, not just those belonging to persons who might come under investigation, this newfound tracking capacity runs against everyone. Both of these cases show that continuously logging location information of citizens and searching these databases without a judicial warrant, I believe would be a violation of the fourth amendment. The United States is a country that prides itself on being a free country, and I think Los Gatos needs to do its part and remove its network of automated license plate readers. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to Austin, who will be followed by Josh Williams.

All right, so there was gonna be a lot that I was gonna say, but I'm gonna have to go off script here for a second and just encourage you to read my written comments. Council Member Hudes, you know as well as I do that the draft agreement is a draft agreement and is subject to change. And it's your job to provide direction to staff to change it if you don't like it. And so for these guys to come up and say that they don't want the department to use flock, that's absolutely 100% within the purview of this meeting right now. And I would encourage you to consider it. Thank you.

Josh Williams, who will be followed by Liam McKanny.

Hello, Josh Williams. I'm actually a resident of Saratoga. I wanted to come tonight because this is a big, serious issue that is affecting my community directly. I also have a lot of ties in Los Gatos. My son went to Los Gatos High School. I have a lot of friends and family members in Los Gatos, so there's a big connection there. So I just want to make a couple quick points. One, first off, taking on Saratoga Policing would further spread the Los Gatos Police Department, contrary to what we have heard, by greatly increasing the amount of sparsely populated rural and mountainous areas that would be served. Chief Fields says that it is about building out patrol and capacity, but I've heard her also state in other meetings that you have been struggling to staff full-time deputies currently. How would you hire seven additional officers? And who gets priority for future openings? Saratoga, Los Gatos, Monteserano? Are you going to try to make that work? That's going to be very challenging. And it was also stated that Los Gatos has to cover the cost, as I was very happy got brought up. What I saw in the numbers was it was almost $5 million. Yes, you're gonna try and get that back from Saratoga over time, but that is an upfront cost to Saratoga. And when I've been hearing you guys talk in past meetings about budget deficits and trying to balance the budget, that's concerning. Saratoga also is currently underpaying for policing and is being subsidized by the county. If this happens, Los Gallos is going to start subsidizing Saratoga because they pay less for policing than almost any other city in the entire Bay Area. And lastly, the response time that we saw in the presentation, it's just not real. Building out capacity is one thing that was stated, but we all know the horrendous beach traffic trying to get there. I mean, you guys talk about it all the time. I don't know how you guys survive in some of your summer months. I have to bring my son to school back and forth. I mean, it was ridiculous. And so response time, like those numbers are a joke.

Thank you. We'll go to Liam, who will be followed by Charles Tuckfield.

Hello, I'm Liam McKinney. I'm a Los Gatos resident. I grew up here, graduated from Los Gatos High School. I'll keep this pretty brief. I think most other speakers have touched on the points I wanted to mention, but Los Gatos is a safe town. It's been a safe town for my entire life. I'm concerned with the additional $3 million upfront cost that we're going to have to take on in order to undergo this project. I think that's money that could be put into other places to better our... or extracurricular options for young people. And of course, I am here because I'm concerned about ALPRs. I know it's kind of an open question whether or not Los Gatos will have access to Saratogas. It's under their jurisdiction, but I think just based off my gut that it's quite likely that we will have those additional hundred or so cameras that fall under our jurisdiction. Personally, I would much rather the status quo remain. I believe those are not currently operational because they're not permitted by the county. Flock cameras and other ALPRs have significant security risks, whether that comes at the hands of officers misusing the data that they're directly able to access, whether that comes from, I think, the innate risk that comes from having a partnership with a private company where there's some level of obfuscation about what they're actually doing with that data, whether it comes from security breaches. If data leaks, you know, flock claims that they only use the license plate, they only track your car, but there's other AI models out there that can definitely use the data that they have to find out more sensitive information about you. So I consider this risky, and I prefer that Saratoga remain under the jurisdiction of the county.

Thank you. And we'll go to Charles, who will be followed by Heidi Owens.

Hi, I'm Charles. I'll keep it quick as well. I grew up in Los Gatos. I love this town. I graduated from Los Gatos High School in 2022. And what I appreciate about this community is that it's safe. It's walkable. We have good schools. And, you know, our town has always been safe. And I haven't really understood why we've needed automatic license plate reader cameras. You know, and going back to what everyone else has said today, you know, the data is at high risk of being leaked and it could be misused. So I think that our town should not continue using automatic license plate readers. And it is within your guys's power to stop that. Thank you.

Thank you. Go to Heidi Owens, who will be followed by Bobcat.

Honorable Council, my name is Heidi Owens. I'm a longtime resident of the town, a candidate for town council, and a former employee of the county privacy office, which was created based on a referral from Supervisor Joe Sumidian, who's probably the biggest privacy legislator we've had in the state. I'm a fan of elected officials maintaining control over budgets and operations, which is sometimes difficult in smaller towns. It becomes even more difficult when staff reports to more than one council. In this case, they would report to three councils. I wanted to clarify an earlier comment about who controls the surveillance technology policies at the county. In fact, thanks to Supervisor Sumidian, the sheriff and all county departments must submit surveillance technology use policies for the Board of Supervisors to review and approve. Those policy approvals can't be put on consent either. It's in the board policy. They don't get just swept under the rug. They're reviewed by the public every time. So it gives an opportunity for the public to inspect and comment upon all technology usage, including license plate scanners and all other surveillance technologies. This town council has the authority to direct staff to bring back a proposal for a similar town council policy, which would be that you would want to see surveillance technology usage policies for any surveillance technology that the police or any other department wants to use. So you could direct that council review that and come back with a recommendation along with this policing proposal or just separate from the policing proposal. I also want to encourage council to implement a different approach to reviewing the police agreement rather than a process for resolving disputes to have three-year contract reviews. So you proactively approve continuance of the agreement and review costs every three years. And one really quick comment, indirect costs matter a lot. In my department, it's 38% indirect costs. This proposal, I know it's hard to calculate those costs, but you need to know the indirect costs. Thanks.

Thank you. We'll go to Bobcat.

Okay, flock, you know, I got to stay on the cover. Okay, be a little serious. I have some information. I know that this is pretty much the first time, but actually, you guys had a midnight meeting, and the only person that spoke on it was the mayor of Saratoga. It was after midnight when, because I'm looking at the research, I... have articles here on August 7th. Uh, it was in the paper, uh, something about, you know, some of the police stuff here on, uh, June 12th. The, this, you guys probably remember this picture. Uh, it, it, that was the first time it really came out. It goes back to January 31st. The shortage of, uh, police for, uh, Montessori no shortfall police logging overtime on January 31st that you know this this thing March 20th 2000 thing police overtime in San Jose it was 70 million I you know I'm just trying to make sure that you guys understand that like the Finance Commission just heard about it last night no I don't think the public knows about it yet is to come out and I'd like to try to get this continued so the public can talk about it instead of, you know, a couple people here, because I think more people will chime in. Another thing that was brought up, holiday or high volume, if there's a party going on, you know, like on 4th of July and both things, I don't think you'd have enough police officers to cover, you know, the drinking and stuff like that if both, cities or cities and towns have parties. And then just basically, I know I only have five seconds, but if you can continue it and let the public weigh in, because I think they'll say some, they'll write in and stuff like that. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, that's our last speaker card in the room. And we have three hands raised on Zoom. We'll start with Tim M and then go to KBT.

Hi all, I am Tim McKenzie. I am asking you to not continue with this process. There is enough information that just came out to show it is not a prudent course of action. In addition to the more than $3 million upfront costs that you'll have to take on, there's also the question of the ongoing costs. Saratoga was paying $9 million to the county before the new deal was signed. The county wanted them to pay $11 million to actually recover costs. And then what was eventually signed was a $10 million deal, which means that the $9 million booked in as the recurring annual costs are underselling by $2 million. Los Gatos is already subsidizing Saratoga's policing because all of us in the county are doing so. If you take on this deal, you will be paying millions of dollars a year or losing millions of dollars a year. It is just not a prudent idea. And also, And please correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you might be locked in 1 of the slides said that decisions would be made and held at council and would be require approval from both city councils. So, if. Los Gatos wanted to stop providing the policing services and Saratoga wanted to keep going because they were getting a good deal, getting subsidized millions of dollars a year. Would you even be able to extricate yourselves from the deal? It just really, there's enough information here to know that this is not a good idea. Please just stop it. You're good. You've done your due diligence. You looked into it. Don't follow up with it. Cease it here. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to KBT and then Andrew Seigler.

That presentation earlier was a whole lot of pretty words to say we have to overall our entire service model to add an entire extra city. And we don't know the true cost, but trust us, it'll be fine. Your department is already understaffed with tons of overtime and unfilled positions. There's no guarantee you'll be able to get all these officers and support staff hired, let alone onboarded and properly trained in a year. And this is also heavily banking on the guarantee that Saratoga will first even agree to this and to be able to foot the bill for all this after the fact in this year of prep. You expect us to believe that an already understaffed apartment overwhelmed by unruly teenagers and jewelry thieves who swap and get away in rental cars will somehow be able to take on Saratoga too? The chief already admitted they have to rely on the sheriffs for assistance sometimes as it is. Adjacency and occasional cooperation does not equal readiness. Town Council, I urge you to abandon this plan altogether. Get your own house in order. Fully staff your own police department. Get your costs under control so it doesn't take up 40% of the town budget before you even consider adding another city. I sincerely hope the city of Saratoga officials realize the shit end of the stick this plan really is for them, which is to make them fund your police expansion. How long until Chief Field comes to you saying they are, in fact, overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of service and logistics in a couple years, and the police department just has to have that... Fuses $66 million HQ. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Chief Field's best buddy, Sheriff Bob, is secretly in support of this insane plan as a workaround to get access to these cameras that the Board of Supervisors specifically banned. It's no secret Sheriff Bronson has been deeply displeased by that February decision and said so at multiple meetings. Please, Town Council, your duty is to your own citizens first. Protect them and the town's financial stability and service first. Abandon this plan. Get your own house in order first before you even think to double your coverage area.

Thank you. We'll go to Andrew Seigler.

Hey, this is Drew Seigler. And well, let me get this straight. A police department that is perennially unable to come close to filling its budgeted positions and in turn is working tons of overtime is now going to take on the duties of covering an entire additional city. I'm sure your average Los Gatos thinks that's a splendid idea. And this overtime plague department is taking on a city that it has no experience in. Doesn't know the landscape, doesn't know the businesses, doesn't know the people. And I'm sure your average Saratogan will have no issue with overworked cops who don't know the people or the landscape taking over for a department that's worked for that town for 70 years. A decision this consequential should at least wait until the public has had an opportunity to see what is being proposed. With the millionaire transition study just coming public when this agenda was posted a couple days ago, I'm sure your average resident hasn't had an opportunity to fully digest where their hard-earned tax dollars may be going. Pump the brakes. Reject this plan tonight. Thanks.

Thank you. We'll go to Nova J. Raj.

Hello, I'm Nova Jaraj. I'm also a high school student. I'm not, again, I'm not really commenting here to just say that outright. I think this is a bad idea. I understand there's a lot of, you know, cost benefits for Saratoga to have Los Gatos expand into their area. I just wanted to bring up a concern that I think other youth have been hitting at, which is the department's continued usage of block cameras. I feel like In terms of, you know, having amendment rights to privacy, I don't really see flock cameras as necessarily being super beneficial. I think somebody touched on it earlier, like flock has been giving data to federal forces. And Mountain View recently actually banned flock cameras because of basically the information being breached. And so as a constituent, I have some concerns on the ethics behind continued usage and what that means to expand into Saratoga, who had it banned under the county and now has access to their 72 flock cameras again. Just trying to be mindful about that and the ethics behind that and the broader implications of what that means. I feel like when we expand into a new area, there's a certain responsibility that comes with that. And I just want to make sure that we are being a model police department. Thank you.

Thank you. And that is our last public comments. I'm going to close public comment and return to the council and I'll begin with council member.

Thank you, Mayor. This is a historical change for the town of Los Gatos, the city of Saratoga, and Monte Sereno. And this is a partnership worthy of continued discussions with the city of Saratoga. and before i make a motion i'm going to request from the town manager that if saratoga requests that we entered into an agreement that we seek perspective from the finance commission as part of their work plan so with that i'm going to proceed with my lengthy motion And that is to receive and accept the malaria public safety consulting transition study for police services in the city of Saratoga. And the independent review of the police services cost model performed by Matrix Consulting Group. approve the proposed regional law enforcement services partnership framework and the financial basis, including an initial annual base rate of $9,392,000 for ongoing services and an estimated annual startup cost recovery installment of $337,000 for an annualized total of $9,729,000 before applicable simple interest and other authorized charges. adopt a resolution receiving and accepting the Saratoga Police Services transition study and independent cost review, approving the proposed regional law enforcement services partnership framework and fiscal year 2027 through 2028 contract financial basis, approving the agreement for law enforcement services in substantial form, and authorize continued discussions with the City of Saratoga regarding a potential regional law enforcement services partnership, Authorize the town manager in consultation with the chief of police and town attorney to continue discussions and negotiations with the city of Saratoga regarding the proposed regional law enforcement services partnership and agreement. And to return to the town council for consideration of final approval and authorization. to execute the agreement if and when Saratoga, following its public review and consideration process, requests that Los Gatos proceed with final consideration.

Thank you. Is there a second? Councilmember Hudtis? I'll second. Great. Are there further comments on the item? Yes, Vice Mayor Risto.

I'd like some clarification. I don't understand the initial part. Are you saying that before this negotiation happens that the Finance Commission does a full review? Because I'm looking at this as we've had the Meliora study, we've had specific experts in law and in law enforcement look at the model, we have restrictions on what can be passed through and what must be passed through. So I don't understand what the Finance Commission is supposed to do for this.

That is not part of my motion at all. In fact, it preceded my motion. It's just a simple request to the town manager.

Okay. Thank you. I didn't hear you clearly. So this is the recommended...

If I may... Council member Badami is making the staff recommendation. The statement prior to that was to get input from the commission. And so my intent, since we do actually have a special finance commission meeting on September 30th, is to put this on that agenda with the grant item, which is what they're discussing. And if Saratoga requests for us to enter into this when we come to council to at least have that perspective of the commission and the staff report so council is aware of what items the finance commission wants you to consider.

Okay, my apologies. I misunderstood. Yeah, then I'll be supporting the motion. And I think this is really historic. This did not just get sprung on the public. This has been highlighted at a number of town council meetings and brought to Saratoga and public outreach. And I think this makes so much sense. So I am hoping that this can move forward, but certainly from my perspective, I'm supportive of our staff moving forward on this.

Great, I'll look to Council Member Hudes. Thank you. You know, there's been tonight some discussion about risk, about risk, privacy risk, about financial risk and other considerations. But I want to put it in perspective that aside from these risk considerations, It seems as though there are two major public safety enhancements for Saratoga that would also benefit Los Gatos and Monte Sereno. Number one is enhanced community policing. That is a police force that knows the people who live in where they are providing public safety. under the los gatos model our community not only knows the brass Importantly, they know the officers who know the people in our community. Some of those people are struggling and are in contact with the police frequently, and some of them are only in contact with the police on a 20 year cycle because they've had no need. But a lot of them know our police force. And the officers who are serving are not just part of a large roster that's rotated in and out of the community. Secondly, I think that our emergency response uh... across these communities can be enhanced by cooperation and collaboration not only response but most importantly preparation uh... for the emergencies that might come our way and thinking about our greatest threat wildfire which doesn't know city limits And I would also add that our exceptional and probably unique within the county collaboration and coordination between CERT, emergency communications, and the police force is truly exceptional and would benefit all of us to include the West Valley City of Saratoga. And so for me, enhanced regional safety is why I am so enthusiastic about this initiative that's brought forth this proposal.

The town manager.

There's 1 more piece of information that actually came to light tonight. The chief was over at my Serena. The city of money Serena was considering a letter of support. For this partnership tonight, they voted 5 0 to approve that letter of support for the partnership.

Um, okay, then I'll just jump in with some of my thoughts. Um, I thought that council member stated as well. I think this, you know, this opportunity surely warrants further discussion. I think it's something to, you know, um, uh, continue with and I'll be very curious to see how the discussion goes at Saratoga tomorrow evening. Obviously, all of this is contingent on on our partners over in Saratoga. Um. But I think that warrants further discussion. You know, I think The Los Gatos Montefiore Police Department is, in my opinion, an exceptional police department, one that truly has the best interests of the Los Gatos community. I think that's under the leadership of our chief, and I think we touched on this a little bit earlier. I think our police department is unique from other police departments that I've interacted with and seen even in our county. I think mostly, I mean, in many ways, but in One of the biggest ways is in our staff, our police officers, the people that work for our department. And I think having more of those folks providing public safety in our community would be a huge win for our entire region. I think the capacity building piece is important, the financial piece is important, the emergency preparedness piece is important. And so I think this definitely warrants for further discussion and I'll be attending the meeting in Saratoga tomorrow to understand how their council is thinking about this and hope that we will be able to have another conversation about this soon. I do just want to also address The public comments we heard this evening, I think I appreciate that so many youth came out to speak to us tonight and residents of all ages. And I think the concerns that have been brought up by flock also warrant further discussion in the future. And so I appreciate the comments tonight. Thank you. Okay, there is a motion and a second. With no other comments, I will call the question. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. All right. We will now turn to council matters. And I will start with Councilmember Rennie, if he's ready.

Thank you, Mayor Moore. I don't think I have anything to report. Great. Councilmember Hudus?

Just have a couple. At a very full weekend, along with many of the council members and the mayor and vice mayor, commemorating the 9-11 anniversary at the flame here and very, very moving speech by a first responder from New York. The night before I participated in the Cities Association where the Regional Interoperability Authority made a presentation about the importance of connecting police and fire communications, which was a learning from 9-11. I partook at the Oktoberfest. That was a lot of fun. And then, let's see, I participated in the Finance Commission last night.

That's it. Great. I'll go to Vice Mayor Risto.

at the end of august on august third thirty first there was a joint cities association in silicon valley clean energy meeting where we had a presentation about air district regulation and appliance rules and there is a lot of uh... i've seen a lot of misinformation out about uh... the upcoming regulations that will require new water heaters to be electric Air Quality Board will be meeting to look at amendments. It should be starting January 2027 that if you need to replace your water heater, it needs to be electric, but they may pass an amendment to move it a year just to get the information out. And to be clear, the whole point of this long planned phase out of certain gas appliances that vent to the outdoors, which would be a water heater, and then ultimately the furnace, is totally centered around air pollution. These devices are vented outside, they produce NOXs, different nitrogen oxides, which creates smog. And really unfairly, not only do our devices pollute the air, they blow across the bay and the East Bay takes the brunt of it. So in an effort to help us reel in our air pollution and meet federal air quality standards, which we don't on a regular basis, there's a move to gas appliances. So no one's gonna come and rip out anybody's present gas water heater, but when it comes time to replace it, you'll be going electric. On the 2nd of September, I met with our PG&E government representative, Monica Faria, She's I think meeting with all the council members, but we had a discussion about reliability issues, especially surrounding the Civic Center and the difficulty that residents and sometimes businesses have When they need PG&E to come out and inspect and you may have to wait sometimes months Which is really hard if you're doing a new hookup I also met that same day with the Los Gatos High School Sustainability Policy Club and they are very interested in getting the word out to students and seeing ways to get more high school students to take the VTA bus and looking at the Every quarter the bus schedule can be adjusted, but right now in one direction the bus stops in front of Los Gatos High School at 817 in the morning for 830 class. So it's pretty ideal. So good energetic group of students. I'll be meeting with them again. On the 9th I attended the Silicon Valley Clean Energy Board of Directors meeting. As the alternate for council member, Rennie, and just at a top level, we adopted a stub budget for the period of October to December 31st, 2026. Because Silicon Valley clean energy is moving our fiscal year. to align with the annual year. So we'll be doing January to January. And so we had a three month period. So we had a fiscal stub of three months. So we had to adopt a budget for that. And then we received a report detailing each of our community's participation in Silicon Valley clean energy programs. On the 10th, the VTA Policy Advisory Committee met and we recommended to the VTA Board of Directors to adopt the 2027 transit service plan and we were presented with two options because there is going to be a On the ballot, there's a revenue measure for transportation around the Bay Area. And so, if it does not pass, we saw what the base service model will look like. And if it does pass, the local investment service plan. So the staff put together two plans so that they're ready to move forward after the election, depending on what the funding level is. And then on the 11th, as mentioned by Council Member Hudes, I also was at the morning 9-11 Memorial for the Keepers of the Flame with a discussion, well, our mayor gave a great speech, but talking about how we have an entire generation who's been born since 9-11 and the importance of making this not feel like history, but to be a real understanding of what our country went through and what we continually face and what it takes to keep our democracy and keep our safety. And then that evening I was at Los Gatos High School for the, there was a nice tribute by Assemblymember Liccardo as well as our mayor and the superintendent for two Los Gatos High School alumni Mark Bingham and Oh my gosh, I'm losing my mind.

Todd Beamer.

Todd Beamer, yes. And both Bingham and Beamer had attended Los Gatos High School and they were among the members of Flight 93 who overtook the cockpit and kept the plane from crashing into its intended target and crashed into a field. It was pretty amazing. The students were very riled up about it. I think the superintendent, Heath Rocha, had the idea to move the memorial that was on campus under the Redwoods for Beamer and Bingham out to the front of the high school, so it's out in front of the carved cat. And there isn't a day that I walk by that I don't see people out reading it, noticing it, and he wanted it to be there to inspire the students for what it really means to be a Wildcat. So it was quite touching. Sunday, are you gonna talk about the Java juice? Please, talk about it. The mayor and I met with a group called Java Juice Los Gatos Robotics Team, and they were just launching their next season. So they came together last year. They compete in robotics competitions, and the work they do with the programming and the mechanical aspect of this robot. They're given a challenge and, you know, like shooting a ball, you know, scooping up balls and shooting them into targets. They have a new challenge for next year. It was just really exciting to see what they're doing and, you know, how they can come together from different schools and work on a very difficult challenge with technology that I didn't even know about until I was probably in my 30s. And then finally last night I was at the Finance Commission.

Council Member Badami.

Thank you. On September 3rd, I participated in a board meeting of the West Valley Stormwater Authority. Later that afternoon, I participated in a board meeting of the West Valley Solid Waste Management Authority. On the 12th, I also attended Oktoberfest. It was the liveliest ever, a family fun, and a great turnout. September 14th, last night I attended a meeting at the Finance Commission. Council Member Hudes made earlier comments on item number nine for the Code of Conduct Conflict of Interest Policy to be revisited by the Policy Committee. But the Policy Committee only meets once a month, and I think we have a full workload through the end of the year. So that being said, it might be more appropriate to agendize it for full council discussion. So I'll try a motion and see if I get support. I move to agendize consideration of an amendment to Code of Conduct Policy 2-04 with a conforming change to Policy 2-19 requiring disclosure on the record before the decision of personal, professional, and business relationships with those who have an interest in the matter.

I'll second that.

Town Manager, can you remind us of our process here? There's the two council members that wanted to agendize an item.

Correct. So this would then come back with a very brief staff report. Under council matters. Under council matters for discussion. And the council at that time would need to vote at a majority of council to give direction.

Got it. Okay.

Thank you.

Great. Um, uh, okay. Are you good?

Um, yeah, so, uh, so a motion and a 2nd is sufficient or is it, I think it's so it just requires 2 council members to request. Okay. If there is a 3rd council member, you can just direct the specific action, but it's your choice.

I'm not going to vote for it because I need a little more information to understand what we're talking about. So the process sounds perfect to me, come back with enough information for me to understand what I'm voting for. Great, sounds good, okay.

All right, and then to wrap things up, so I attended the first meeting of this cohort of the Youth Commission and spoke to them briefly, another excellent group, truly just stellar young leaders we have in the town of Los Gatos, all really ambitious, all excited to sink their teeth into some projects, so hoping that we as the council can empower them to do so. Um, the, uh, I, along with attending the city's association board meeting that council member has talked about, I chaired the city's association legislative action committee where we received some state legislative updates. Um, uh, there are. genuinely hundreds of bills on the governor's desk right now that impact cities. And so I'll be curious to hear from staff and our folks at CalCities in the coming months which of those we need to really be paying attention to. And there's also 14 propositions on the November ballot that the League of Women Voters and Los Gatos Eleanor Yick presented about. She did a great job and also talked about the regional transit measures, so 15 total measures on the ballot. I attended the monthly mayor's meeting with Supervisor Abe Koga. As has been mentioned by other council members, I attended the 9-11 Keepers of the Flame Memorial where my message I think really emphasized for those that weren't there that I was barely three years old on 9-11 and so I have no personal memory of the day. And so I think that was surprising for some and important to recognize that Everyone who is younger than me also will not have personal recollection of the day. And so it's especially important that we continue teaching the next generation about the history of 9-11 and the importance of standing up for our country. Later in that evening, I attended the 9-11 football game, was honored to be invited onto the field with Congressman Sam Liccardo and Superintendent Heath Rocha and Chief of Police Jamie Field.

you

And I think that football game did exactly what I was talking about of helping younger people recognize the gravity of 9-11. There was a, as everyone in Los Gatos knows, a 2F15 flyover. It was interesting. I did receive a number of emails about that afterwards from people that were unhappy. I don't know that we, you know, I think we shared a lot about it online. But, you know, talk to somebody who said, you know, I didn't know. scared me so for what that's worth um i attended the k-cat oktoberfest agreed um that it was the best one yet it was the fifth um year they've been doing it and um as the mayor as former mayors have done had the honor of tapping the keg which was very fun and also a little precarious um so you know make sure you you line it up uh how you like next year uh future mayors um because it was a do like a backhand I tabled at the farmer's market. I attended Lions Club Date Night, which my fiance, Kylie, and I attend every year, and we always have so much fun. And I think this was the first year that Town of Los Gatos employee, Jackie Rose, did not come home with hundreds of raffle prizes. She was really gunning for the cotton candy machine and didn't get it. So that was bittersweet. Kylie did win something. Um, uh, I attended the meeting of the West Valley sanitation district and met with a variety of residents. Now turn things over to the town manager and we'll also see if our, um, uh, consulting attorney has anything to report.

The only report I have is the council had a public hearing regarding the West Valley Muslim Association and made a motion to schedule a public hearing date uncertain upon all the information that we required for that hearing to be held. The last piece of information was a egress study. What that was to be provided by the association. They have provided that study. It's currently under review by the fire department. Once it's deemed to be sufficient, we will be immediately scheduling a public hearing, which will take roughly about three, three and a half weeks for the noticing requirements for that public hearing. With that, I'll turn it back to you, Mayor. Thank you.

Does our consulting attorney have anything to report?

Nothing tonight, Mayor.

Thank you very much. Thanks for your help this evening. Thanks for being here. All right. With that, this meeting is adjourned.