Town Council - Special Meeting

All right, good evening everyone. Um, this meeting of the Loscatoos Town Council is called to order. Tonight's meeting is a special meeting um to discuss our budget and strategic priorities along with training on Rosenberg's rules of order. Um, can we please have the role? Council member Annie here. Council member Hudis here. Council member Badami here. Vice Mayor Risto here. Mayor Moore

here. Uh we'll begin with verbal communications. This is for members of the public to address the council on items that are not on the agenda. Though for special meetings, you can only address the council on items um on the agenda. Um uh so we will um open verbal communications. Um I have no hand. I have no cards in person and no hands raised on Zoom. So, we will close verbal communications and move to other business. Um, again, we have two items. Um, and we'll start with the first discussion of the town strategic priorities and budget process. Um, I'll turn it over to town staff to kick us off.

[snorts] M M Mr. Merritt, it looks like we may have I have it for for item one. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. [laughter] Okay. So, you will take comment during the course of correct items. Okay. Perfect.

All right. Well, good evening. Um this is one year one day shy of one year since the last time we had the conversation on the strategic priorities. And if you remember the last time we had this conversation we had a more in we had a consolidated survey with results on different elements of our mission statement our vision statement the core goals and the strategic priorities and that led to uh a reframing of the priorities that we see before us today. see if I can get this machine to work here. So, what we want to uh go, it's an 18 slide presentation, so I'll try to move relatively quickly through this. Um, so I won't necessarily hit in deep detail unless you want to stop and talk a little more and then we'll get to the end where the council has the opportunity to discuss and provide input and perspective for staff to take into account as we move forward in the budget process. So we'll go over the mission, vision, and the core goals. And then we'll talk about the new reformulated 202527 strategic priorities. And we've provided you a listing of the different accomplishments broken down by each of the strategic priorities. So you can see the level of effort that has been performed. And in the PowerPoint, I'll make special emphasis on the top three priorities and those accomplishments. Next slide, please. So, the town has a mission statement. It focuses on quality of life, our quality [snorts] leadership, and providing efficient services and facilities. Um, it promotes excellence. It fosters cooperation in our community, which we do very well. It values volunteerism, something that we see a tremendous amount through our commissions. and it and we and we're here to meet the needs

of the community. Our vision statement is listed. I won't go through the elements of this, but this is the one that's verbatim from our 2019 general plan document. It sets the direction of where we're going. And then we lead into the next slide which is our you know three of the six core goals that we have that are fundamental where all activities tend to fall under one of these six. Um I can go through each of them but I think they're pretty self-explanatory. You know one addressing the look and feel of our community. The second one being how do we make decisions and consider actions that impact our community. The third one is really in my mind very foundational in terms of having a very fiscal strong organization that can provide the other five core goals and operations. And then on the next slide, quality public infrastructure, something that folks in our community interact with on a daily basis. U sometimes we take those for granted when they're operating well until they're not operating well in which we then tend to hear it in high numbers. um having a very involved community under the civil uh civic engagement core goal and then clearly you know public safety in many aspects from our police and our disfire district uh to the engineering and other aspects that we our facilities keeping the community safe anywhere they are in Loscatos. Last year we reformulated our strategic priorities. Our strategic priorities were really just a list. We never really identified any that were emphasized as these are the areas that we really want you to focus on. And with the number of 11 different priorities, I think we had 12 last year, it's very challenging to

make sure you you can perform all of them. And clearly you just can't perform all of them equally. And so in the wisdom of the council, we identified three that we saw as very significant high priorities um as strategic priorities. They're not one-year priorities, they're multi-year priorities. And we decided to align our resources and efforts behind those three. And in the remaining eight additional priorities, as we had capacity and ability to perform in each of those areas, but realistically the top three were the ones that we really wanted to make movement on. These um priorities and the historical priorities going back more than 10 years are listed at the website that's shown below on the slide. And as we look at those three top strategic priorities, you know, we focus on emergency preparedness and wildfire risk, which is something we've had a lot of conversations about, prudent financial management, and then ensuring the small town charm of our community, uh, while maintaining housing opportunities, the historic neighborhoods, and at the same time implementing the housing element with all the mandates that the state's putting before us as we look to emergency preparedness. We had some very fundamental shifts in how we operated. We hired our first emergency manager in formulating an emergency management division. The council uh approved a $1 million allocation uh for the purposes of uh wildfire and emergency preparedness activity without having specified activities [snorts] to provide resources to that new manager to be able to make movement. And movement he did. Uh we updated our emergency operations plan and have done a tremendous amount of training for our staff who are all designated as disaster service workers. Uh we've completed uh five open space areas in terms of our

wildfire abatement. Most of those resources came from grants uh with one additional grant that we're still waiting on authority to expend. We expanded upon the neighborhood incident command post which is a model uh for the town of Los Gatos operated through our police department and in coordination with C and DART. We've now implemented our first drone as a first responder capability that significantly enhances our ability to provide public safety in Los Gatos. We've improved our operational reliability in some of our facilities. In some cases, you know, main communication lens were singular, so when it go down, it would actually have an impact on our ability to provide service. And so, we provided some redundancy there. And we're doing the same in our parks and public works uh department for that capability. uh when there's reimbursements to be had by FEMA, we've been submitting those on the required milestones in some cases far ahead of schedule to seek those reimbursements. And we did actually activate at our level three or lowest level our emergency operations center and had a tremendous response by our police department uh for the Super Bowl this past Sunday uh which went remarkably well and was a great dry run for when the World Cup and other activities come into town. So I think overall we made significant progress in improving our readiness, coordination and our ability to respond. Yet there is still significant work that needs to be done in terms of the area of fiscal stability and our long-term financial management. On the next slide, you know, we've improved visibility on long-term structural challenges. I think if you anybody who's followed the finance commission and the council uh we're speaking truth uh to our situation to our weaknesses to areas that we have to improve and while we've had clean audit results I think what's important

to note is a sincere openness on staff the finance commission and the council and enhancing our ability to provide good information and in in a timely fashion that allows us to make better decisions and not decision isions that come 6 months after the close of a fiscal year. And with the u now new administrative services director who comes with the same experience from a neighboring town, uh we will continue to improve upon the efforts that were done by our previous finance director and continue to improve that transparency in the community. We adopted a tiered structure for our 5-year capital improvement program. Um, it's easy for us to list a a long list of capital projects that we intend to to perform and put it in our budget and it sounds great when you put it down on paper, but when you end the year with a a smaller subset of those being completed and a large amount of carryover funds that carry over for those projects, it leaves a little more to be desired. um we have expectations to perform and we want to make sure when we commit that the resources are there and that the staff capacity is there. And so we created a three- tier structure where the tiered one projects are ones where we had funding identified and available and we had staff capacity to perform on that and we've been doing relatively well performing on those projects. We also try to find opportunities where the general fund and the resources of the taxpayers directly in Loscatoos can be offset by grant funding to do projects. And we had a very significant $8 million grant project that we completed which was the highway 9 to Los Gats Creek Trail connector. Uh that's a significant savings to the general fund budget. And it also is a testament to us having a shovel ready project where other agencies were not able to perform and money needed to be redeployed. We were there to catch those resources and were able to get this project without a

significant amount of general fund resources. We've been enhancing our financial controls and we will continue to do so over the course of the next couple of years. And we've increased some of our fees to ensure cost recovery so that the general taxpayer is not subsidizing the activity and benefits of individuals in the community that those individuals are bearing the cost of the services that come from the town. And so we will continue to build on those stronger financial control and with the uh inclusion of our analysis by NHA advisors and their subcontractors Rafelis and Willan get a more robust 10-year financial plan and understand the impacts financially of the implementation of our housing element and the growth in housing from now to 2040 as well as how to better allocate our resources uh through an liability study. In terms of our community character and housing implementation, um there's been a significant amount of work. I probably don't even need to say much about this uh slide because of how much work is done uh to our community development staff and our engineering staff in PPW. Um you will have to you have to stand in the room to see the significant workload and long hours that staff put in in terms of these SP330 projects and our builder's remedies. In terms of the builder's remedy eligible projects, we were successful in working with a developer and with the help of the community and staff um getting a developer to build to convert and take the opportunity for a town home project where a large tower was going to be placed on Lascatus Boulevard. I think that's a significant win for our community in terms of that project. And those town homes are a good product that while still expensive, they're less expensive than a single family home in Lascatus and offer an opportunity for others to be able to be able to move into our community. We've been implementing the housing element

programs. Uh more are to come. We're working on some of those programs now and those will come forth to the council. We approved a right-of-way licensing agreement and this was on the heels of private improvements that were being built on public land and knowing that that had been in a community as ours that's greater than a 100red years um encroachments on public land are common uh we ran across it when we were doing Shannon Road improvements and we needed a more consistent approach and criteria to apply for the subsequent ones that we may come across. And we're also lastly working on at the direction of council the sale of our historic Fortate property. Uh and in doing so [snorts] have drafted a significant covenant to protect the historic nature of the facade of that fire station so that we can ensure that that building or the essence of that building remains for many years to come. So as we move forward in the budget process, I want to focus a little on one of the additional strategic priorities specifically related to the to developing a structure to ensure accountability um that help us achieve our core goals and priorities. When you open up the budget book, which is a very significantly sized document, there is a section that is about 330 pages [snorts] uh which is called section D. In that section, you will find details of the different programs and services. You will find financial numbers that are at a lower level than what the council authorizes, which is at the fund level. And you will see a number of performance metrics and activity metrics in there. Um, that is very significant in terms of the amount. However, it is also a significant work effort from staff to continue that pattern. One of those priorities um that we had last year where it's related to a balanced scorecard where there was a desire to have metrics that we can look

to at a regular basis and to be able to make at least ask questions and make adjustments as we go forth. I am a true believer that those metrics also have to be built into your budget document that we shouldn't be performing work or have metrics that don't lead to some type of decision-m. And so what we've initiated, which we'll take this year and next year, is a look at that operating budget to determine how we could reframe those metrics so that they're metrics that we can regularly track and that they actually would match our expectations for accountability that there they mean something. I'll give, you know, one example that the council hears um every 6 months comes from the police department when it is in relation to response time for priority 1, two, and three calls. That's information that the police department tracks on a monthly basis. It's it's there are metrics that they can adjust operations if they're seeing trends in that in in that data that leads them away from the desired outcome that we're trying to expect. So we're trying to get that in the budget document that then would be get measures that are at the higher level that can come to council and the finance commission that we can track. So that relook will take some time. So I ask the council to bear with us as we engage in that and then we can have the conversation on that part of the budget what those numbers mean how we want to adjust and move forward. In the current year when we were approaching the 2526 budget we were doing so with a history where we were projecting deficits but then ending years with surpluses. And there's a number of reasons for that. Now, we're very conservative in how we project our revenues because we have to be. If you're wrong and the money is not there, then you're cutting something during the course of the year. So, most agencies tend to be conservative and we're conservative on the expenditures where you budget for the maximum amount

authorization and we've been holding the line to try to hold back on expenses to the extent possible and then relying on vacancies um for shoring up the difference. We ended up incurring significant interest income which has not been the norm over the course of the last 5 years. We expect that to occur over the next year or two as well as significantly more vacancies than we projected under the 4.6% scenario. And then a number of other factors that lead into us ending up with surpluses. Yesterday at the finance commission, our new administrative services director um informed the estimates of what we believe we will end the midyear when we were uh the end of the year during our midyear review. And again, while this is an estimate, we're estimating about a $4.3 million surplus due to some of those factors I mentioned earlier, which is a that's a good thing. Um but it also offers us the opportunity that to address some of the current year needs that we have that are really important such as eucalyptus trees which have fallen on homes where you know the the highest claim we face on a eucalyptus tree was equivalent to one FTE in the police department in terms of those occurring. So if we can avoid that, we avoid the negative impact on those. And as I mentioned earlier, NHA advisers is performing their analysis and we hope to have more refined results in March and April. How do we approach the 26 to 27 budget? We're going to continue the practice of what we did last year when we project deficits and then respond by cutting programs and services significantly and then ending the year with significant surpluses. We've reduced the service level to the community and then there's an issue of trust in terms of why did you impact these critical programs when you ended up with millions of dollars in surplus. So what we're going to do is

we're going to continue balancing the the planned use of reserves so that we can minimize any program reductions and focus on maintaining the operations that we have. Our current projections for next year show again conservatively when we're looking at revenues conservatively and expenses conservatively a $3.1 million deficit. But until we actually incur a year with deficits, it's very challenging for us to come and propose very significant programmatic changes. Now, while history would say that we project deficits and end with surpluses, I have to give a note of caution. The pendulum can swing dramatically and quickly. You can have a bad you know bad years in the stock market or several years and that leads to negative impacts of interest income on our financials. We could be very successful in filling vacancies due to the market and below the 4.6 vacancy and that could occur by filling it with permanent positions or incurring overtime far in excess of what we projected. Our pension costs can continue to change based on actuarial results and changes in assumptions that are provided by Kalpers. Our deferred maintenance, which we continue to defer, could result in very significant acute immediate needs that we would have to respond to. And then as we look at our longerterm capital that we've continued to delay, those all come to roost in one classic example of our soccer field that needs a $2.5 million um surface redo that will be necessary in the next couple of years. All of that can change our budget situation. So, we have to be prudent that while we're relying on reserves and holding the line and not cutting programs and services, that we're really looking at a multi-year look into the future and making decisions smartly and not with a

short-term vision, but looking at some of these long-term obligations and deferred maintenance and planning today for tomorrow. I will ask our parks and public works director to come forth and talk a little bit about our capital improvement program and how we're going to proceed over the course of the next year.

So, thank you Chris. Um I'm Nicole Burnham, the director of parks and public works for the town. So, I'm going to cover just two slides talking about our capital improvement program. The first slide is about the status of the current adopted program that was adopted um last June and has been in effect and we've been working through those projects. The town manager mentioned earlier in his presentation um that we we revamped the capital improvement program last year and went into a tiered structure and identified our top projects that we were really going to try to move forward. um and moved a bunch of projects to what we called tier 2 and just agreed that we were going to defer those projects and they would be worked on later. So that we ended up with 36 tier one projects in the adopted capital improvement program budget. Eight of those projects we expect to close by the end of this fiscal year. So they're either completely done now um and or in the process of project close out or we know that we're in striking distance of of completing them. So I've listed those there for you. Um and then there are that means there are 28 projects that are going to carry forward into the next fiscal year. If we go to the next slide, we can see kind of what we're thinking about for um capital improvement program development for the propos for the next fiscal year 2627. So we certainly would continue with the tier one projects that were not completed in 2526. Things like the Shannon Road repair that actually will start in April. um you'll start hearing notice about that, but we'll continue the construction will continue into the next fiscal year. So, that project will stay open. We'll continue with our wildfire um reduction work. Um there's a series of drainage studies. The sport court resurfacing will be done this fiscal year, but probably not close out and close out all the books on until the follow until into the next fiscal year. Um and then we do have a series of ongoing projects that we call annual

projects that we're doing every year. Annual paving, annual sidewalks, um playground enhanced safety enhancements, ADA compliance. These are things that we work on every year that take quite a bit of engineering staff time to prepare um work plans and bid documents and get bids out on the street to implement. So those do take up a significant amount of workload. Those of course will continue in the next year. Um and then we will have some proposed projects that we plan to move forward. Um we would like to propose that this year we we will propose a minimal number of new projects because we'd like to keep focusing on finishing out the ones we've already started. Um and we'd like to look at projects that are focused on internal systems. um be it software or infrastructure like emergency generators that we need to continue this emergency readiness work that we've started in the past. So um you'll hear more about those projects and we'll have more conversations in the future, but that's where we are right now in our thinking about capital improvement for 2627. And I can turn it back to the town manager now. So as we approach this budget cycle, uh we took a very collaborative approach last year with the department heads in terms of coming together to formulate the budget and we will do the same thing again. Um and so it would be very beneficial to get from the council some more visibility into issues that may be facing in the community or things that we need to consider so that when we come together and meet those can be weighed in terms of all the variety of other operational and activities that are internal. Um, and based on any thing that comes out of that that relates to the, you know, items that may have come up today, uh, we'll report back in terms of the budget. And if there's things that are not included, it's something that the council can act on so that we could evaluate and then potentially come back either before the budget's approved

or after the budget's approved to make an adjustment based on the desires and priorities of the council. And so we formulated two questions. one um is what changes if any does the council want to make to the strategic priorities. If you remember last year, we had that robust survey. We did not do it this year given how sign significant amount of work and figured we could do it every two to three years. But if there is a change you would like to make, we can talk about that now. And then secondly, as we move forward in our collaborative process, what insider perspective do you want uh us as a team to consider as we move forward in the budget process? So with that, I will turn it back over to the mayor for discussion. Thank you very much for the informative presentation. Um uh very much appreciate all the the uh thought that went into that. Um I think what we'll start with is our verbal or uh public communications and then hear comments, questions from the council. Um I have one speaker card um which is Tom Picro. If anyone else would like to speak either on Zoom or in person, please uh bring up a speaker card or raise your hand on Zoom. Mr. Picro.

Uh good evening. Thank you. Uh so I'm here to announce a milestone of sort being a very strong advocate for long-term strategic planning. I'd like to thank the town for some accomplishments and this has to do with a senior services roadmap. Many of you on the council will remember back in 2021 as the pandemic began began to wayne uh a uh senior services committee was formed. In 2023 in the same month of February uh the council unanimously endorsed a uh senior services roadmap. That road map had uh seven goals and some 30ome projects with multiple bullets t bullets in each one. Um and uh the now just it's been three years. This was a 10-year plan and uh it's we're just three years into it. And uh I'd like to uh say that uh every single one of the goals have had some major project carry forth within that uh serving that goal. Uh I have to thank the uh town commissioners key town staff and lots of uh volunteers for that work. uh we reached this milestone just because last Friday the uh last goal that uh we hadn't yet uh advance was in volunteerism and with the strong leadership of uh Martha Stern together with Lascow's thrives foundation uh we issued a volunteer news lever letter and initi and uh went live with a a uh website uh where one can find volunteer

opportunities uh uh within the town. That would be a monthly uh newsletter. As we get things going, we'll expect expand it more. Um I think um I think you should uh appreciate that this is something that the council launched. We're very proud that is continuing. It's morphed into not just for senior services but for all people volunteering whether it's teens volunteering or retired people or all ages and so many of these things they really these goals apply to u everybody every member of the town and uh this has leveraged a lot of support a lot of volunteer support from the town without a lot of cost to the town itself. So I just hold this up as a model and way in which you can advance and enhance the community. We formed the Lascows thrives as a result of this and we hope to do much more. So please don't forget about the road map or about a uh long-term goal of a community center for all Asia a modern new center for

Thank you. Thank you very much uh for the update. Um uh and congratulations. Um any other um comments either on Zoom or in person? Seeing none, I will close public comment and look to my council colleagues um uh for questions or thoughts. Council member Badami, [clears throat]

I'll provide some thoughts. Um I'm really a fan of this streamlined approach to the strategic priorities that we took last year focusing on three core issues. Um to me it's working well. It provides us focus. Um it's forward thinking. Um so do I want to change any of those top priorities? No. Um however um I think it could use a little bit of oil and pinning down the metrics so that we could um measure achievement. Thank you. Any questions for staff on anything? Council member,

I think I can second those comments. I also like the streamlined approach and I read through it. I might eliminate an item or two on the strategic priorities, but I know others wouldn't let me, so I'd leave them as they are. Yes, Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. Yeah, I echo that as well. And in fact, um, since I've been on the council and I think long before that, strategic priorities basically were set for two years with very little change in the in between years. And given all the work that is being undertaken and the accomplishments in the past year, I think that our top three priorities are wellstated and um the work that's being done demonstrates the importance of those priorities while we still keep our eye there's other other items that have been accomplished um along infrastructure that reflect some of the lower priorities but um I wouldn't change anything on this this year. Council Benny.

Um, sort of the same thing. Um, section. I I just want to make a couple comments on our desk desk item of the 25 to 27 strategic priorities update that's here. Um, the first thing I want to highlight that I think is important and too bad there's not more people from the public hearing it. It's that we completed the Highway 9 to Los Gats trail connector with an $85 million grant which ended up being 85% of the cost. So it was a 9 million almost $9.5 million project which 85% of it we got funded from grants. And you know I know for example we're working on a bridge over Blossom Hill and I think the number is 26 million or something in that ballpark. And people go, "Oh my god, how can we ever afford that?" Well, I wanted to highlight this because this is how you do it. Um, parks and public work did an excellent job of layering on um, grants to get it done. So, I really wanted to highlight that that accomplishment um, that was mentioned here. Um, one other thing, maybe this is going forward a little bit. Um, in the number six, managing the downtown parking, I've had just a feedback for staff. I've had some comments from uh some of the businesses that on Saturday the employee parking doesn't fill up all the way and it and thus we kind of have uh parking that's empty but can't be used kind of thing and staff might want to evaluate a reduction of Saturday employee parking. And I when I think through that it's possible that some of that is coming from office workers. We do have some offices in the area. You you would think at first glance you're like, "Well, we should still be operating all of the stores on Saturday or maybe even more,

but the feedback I'm hearing is those spaces are going unused on on Saturday." So, something to think about maybe going forward. Those were my two comments so far. Thank you. Um I'll jump in with a couple comments. So, I I generally agree. I think that the process has been working well. I think it's really helpful that we have our top three. I think that that is very um uh you know, I think it's helpful for us. I think it's probably most helpful for staff to to know what um to sort of spend the most time on prioritizing. Um I had a couple sort of specific comments on strategic priorities um that that I wanted to put out there. Um uh again, I think the process is very good. um you know, two I mean, so Council Member Renie um brought up the only strategic priority that I thought could potentially come off, though maybe it it shouldn't, which is manage downtown parking. Um uh I think that's a little bit different. I don't see that as like highly strategic. I think that's more of a a project. So that's I don't know. One thought for the council, I think, you know, u we have 11. and I thought it could be kind of nice to get down to 10, but but maybe not. Um uh I don't feel that strongly about that. The two that that I think I would like to refine just a little bit are the strategic priority that talks about transportation demand management and the strategic priority that talks about um our unhoused neighbors. Um and and again just like slight refinements on each of those I think to capture a little bit more of where our you know or at least my interest in going forward strategically would be. Um and so on on transportation demand management um I think we have a few sort of new

problems and potential initiatives that that I see as under that. Um, one is the rise in illegal ebikes and e- motorcycles. Um, which is significant and I think you know something that I think uh very much telling to how recent this is an issue. I don't remember us even talking about that as an issue last year. Um, and so I mean maybe a little bit but uh I think it's you know much more significant now. Um, and so that's one aspect of of something under that that I think is important. Um and then uh the other is more creative solutions to traffic. Um you know I think we've we we talk a lot about traffic and there's you know it's a very entrenched issue. I think there's you know um something in there about creativity or pilot projects that I think could help a little bit. And I'll take just one step back um which is that I and this is you know sort of bleeds into budget. I'll try to stay on strategic priorities but I I very much appreciate that we're wanting to um focus on key projects and initiatives that are necessary to the operations of the town. At the same I completely agree with that. At the same time, I think it's very important for us to still prioritize visible, tangible capital and programmatic improvements that our residents, you know, I think our residents want to see the community continuing to progress and move forward and improve. And so I I don't think we can exclusively do sort of internal things. Um especially if we're trying to um uh I just think that's that's important. So um so that would so on the the strategic priority of congestion um on transportation demand management

I would I would be interested in adding some language to the effect of um in addition to you know improve safety for all road users add something the the end that says something like pursue tangible infrastructure improvements and explore innovative pilot solutions to improve mobility something to that effect. Um uh and then the other one I'll touch on and then I'll um uh yield is um when we talk about unhoused residents, the the thing that I think would be good to add in there is I think this is something we've talked about in in different ways, but our approach thus far has been, you know, very much based on our limited resources and that has led to a sort of broad more like shotgun approach. I think that's it's you know that's important to try to help everyone we can but I would add want to add something in there about the individualized and complex needs of unhoused residents and then also pursuing a more comprehensive um uh regional approach um because I think with the publishing of the West Valley um homeless service uh homeless services feasibility study I think all the words were written in there in the wrong order, but um I think there's something really important to be said about this not just being a Los Scatos issue and Los Gatos having the capacity to work with other communities to again pursue some more innovative solutions on that. So I can talk more to both of those things, but I um I'm in general agreement, but those are kind of my two um refinements that I would suggest. uh Council Member Hudis and Council Member Renie.

Yeah, thank you. Um I think the approach uh that we've seen has um been very effective at uh focusing and that's reflective in the list of accomplishments under each of the priorities. Um I uh do think that where we have a very long list of in progress which is I'm really referring to uh the first priority which is preparedness um it would be helpful to uh consolidate those into maybe two or three or even four uh sort of uh projects um or initi initiatives uh that because when I look at what's in that list, there's a mix of things that are I would say low impact uh low resource, but there's other items in that list that are uh high impact, high resource, and there's also some things in there that are um I would say uh high resource and low impact. And so maybe using that framework to consolidate um the in progress could be helpful. Um and you know I'm thinking in terms of you know for instance in wildfire uh there are some sort of broader categories um such as uh uh such as uh vegetation and um uh uh weed abatement. There's another one which is in uh evacuation um work and there's another one um

that's in home hardening um and I think there's another one uh in public notification of um incidents and I know that some of this has been in the plan but it would help I think maybe to uh to take what's sort of in progress and to put it into some sort of larger buckets in that list. Um, I did have a question uh uh for the mayor. The the changes regarding um the unhoused uh services, which which one does that fit under? Uh which strategic priority?

Yeah, the last one. Okay. Yeah, I can see how um maybe the wording of that could be changed to accommodate sort of a future look toward that, especially since there have been quite a few accomplishments in that area. Now, you know, I look at this and where I see a lot of accomplishments and not so many in progress, um, as maybe areas for us to take a little bit of a fresh look at where we want to apply resources going forward.

Council Renie,

let me um take tackle tackle um your suggestion of eliminating number six, the the downtown parking. Um I I might be amendable to that, but the first thing I'm thinking through is, you know, we have the Dixon report that we wanted to move forward. In my mind, the two next two big things that could make a difference is the signs that say so many parking available here and we were told that was going to be disruptive. we'd have to tear things up um and expensive and that might not be there may be better places to put our our expense um in the town than than doing that. The other um item was Oh, shoot. It just went out of my head. I should have wrote it down. Um what else was in the Dixon report?

Pay to stay. Yeah, that's right. It was the Exactly. was the pay to stay. Those are the two significant items. And again, I we've gotten push back before when we talked about paying, even when we were saying it was paying to to stay. So, if we don't think we want to address either of those in the near future, I would say just eliminate number six. There's not really any other meat in it. So, if everybody agrees that let's not bother to move that forward at this point, sure, let's take number six off the list. Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. Uh, couple comments, but I'll go right to the parking. I mean, there's multiple aspects of the Dixon report. And it's an excellent report, and I would have to say in the time that I've lived in Loscatoos, I've seen at least two other big studies done that I helped participate in that ended up sitting on a shelf. And I absolutely swore that this one would not. And I I don't know how broadly downtown is included, but um I understand, you know, Julie Dixon is working with Loscatoos High School. We do have a huge parking issue on the east side of town. That's an extension of downtown. The other part is I think with some education when people understand what pay to stay means, you know, right now they stay too long, they get a ticket, they're paying to stay. So there are options for the park one solution. Um, we also with more resources and attention can do a better job with the employee parking because the intention of the employee parking um laid out by Dixon and that would be very helpful on Saturdays and other days is to look at the granularity of where the employees are and instead of just having a huge slop of employee parking have more allocations. So, if you're in the south part of town, where you should be parking and it can be shifted to accommodate where the employees are and free up more space for um visitors. And the Dixon report also included having a small number of employees being able to park on residential streets where the license plate readers indicate that we have a lot of vacancy. For example, on my street, you could have um you could have a number of employees either from the spa or from Rural Supply Hardware parking on a certain part of Broadway with their permits. So, there's more to unfold. Um and I I would really hate to see this come off the list

because I think there's so many different aspects that we're working on and particularly the thorny issue of parking at this part of town is part of that and we're definitely not done there. Um, and then the other thing, um, I would say that I can appreciate what council member Hudday is saying. I don't feel strongly, but when I look at this, I actually like to see the discreet work that's going on and see it broken up into what they are. And so taking all of the tasks that are in progress and then attaching them to our different strategic priorities, looking at for the first one, you know, emergency preparedness and what's in progress. It's a lot of items, but it shows me all the work that can be done. And if there are some that are low resource and can be done quickly, they'll come off the list quickly. And I think if they're binned together, it whichever is the largest, most difficult part of that goal to achieve will mean it all sits there that long. Whereas knocking things off and knowing if you have capacity to add from another bin is helpful. So I would be a little hesitant to try to collapse this. I kind of like it broken out, but I'm, you know, that's not critical. Council member Hudis.

Yeah. I mean, the the content of the work is to me is the same. It's just a matter of being able to look at it. I wouldn't want to eliminate any of the um detail that's here. I'm just thinking that particularly as we start getting our arms around how much it's really going to cost to sustain uh to sustain our efforts on uh wildfire and vegetation management, for instance. uh to get a real start on uh evacuation work um that it it might make sense to have some you know sort of sub bullets or something like that under some categories. I'm not suggesting that we we actually lose a detail. Um I do want to come back to the parking uh idea and that um I don't think we're ready to declare victory and to uh uh to to you know sort of demote that as a priority at this point. Um, I do think that when I talk to a lot of the downtown uh retail businesses, particularly the ones that are not restaurants, um, that continues to be a very big challenge for them. uh and I really don't think that the the wayfinding signs um have had much impact whereas the dynamic sign uh that that uh council member Renie referred to um I think would have a very big impact. It was part of the phase one of the Dixon recommendation. What's interesting is the technology has changed dramatically since then and I think we would need to take another look because from my understanding is you would not implement that by tearing up uh parking spaces and

putting in loops. You would do it with cameras and those cameras could cover uh six or eight or 10 parking spaces and might also uh have other benefits. Um so um I do think that it's worth looking at the Dixon report again and maybe uh having a look at you know is there some advancement in technology that might allow us to move uh some of those ideas forward because I think the ideas themselves are very uh fundamental and important. Um the other and it does tie back to uh some of the challenges that we're probably going to see as uh more intense development uh goes in place where there are just plain not enough parking spaces for the residents and uh we're going to need to stay ahead of that in terms of you know potentially looking at um either permit parking or off-site or other uh kinds of solutions. So, I I think there are still enough challenges there that I I think it would be worth keeping that one in.

Fair enough. I I felt it was part of my meoral duties to try to streamline a bit and hone down, but I I hear uh uh uh the good arguments to to keep that one. Um uh Okay. So, I I would just say, and I know we're, you know, it's a little uh clunky because we're not necessarily going to vote on this this evening. Um, but I'm still uh I would just say I'm interested in as we um uh move forward refining those two that I mentioned a bit more to to be a little bit more clear. Yeah, Council Member Hudis. Um, so I had a question for staff. Um, a few years ago we had a community garden [clears throat] um project and uh it was uh something that was phased um and I'm I'm curious where it might fit here. We've had uh you know some recent public comment in support of this. I've always felt that it's a good idea and it's something that actually in a tangible way brings people together. Um, and um, I think at the time we had a fairly lowcost uh, option because we have some town-owned land. We had some volunteers willing to work on it. Um, and so I'm I'm kind of curious which priority it might fit under if we were to uh take another look at that.

Um, Director Burnham, you go.

Okay, I will jump in. If the town manager wants to add, he certainly can. Um, just to refresh everyone's memory on the status of that project, we did begin working on it. Um, we did a lot of community outreach, spent about 12 months, met a lot of resistance. Um, we also at the time did sampling and analysis of the site the town owns and has available. Um, and re recognized that we were going to need to do some additional preparation work for that site before we can allow food to be planted there and grown there, even if the beds are raised. Um, so with that, we sort of realized the scope was going to be a little more than staff could handle at the time and so moved that project to tier 2 with last year's proposed budget and that is where it it remains for now. Um, in terms of where it would fit, I think it certainly fits some of the community character kind of strategic priorities that we have and sustainability um priorities that we have as a town. Um, I I it's not clear to me that we have staff capacity to pick that project up again at this time.

And just to interject, I think um I think process-wise it makes sense for I think we can finish this up. Um I think we should finish our conversation on strategic priorities and then jump to budget. Um but council member Hus, do you want to react to that? Um no, I I think that as with everything, u there are tradeoffs. So, um it might be worth looking at that uh with regard to other things we might trade off with it at this time. Agreed. Yeah. Council Brandy, did you want to jump in?

You don't have to. [laughter] Okay. All right. Um so, question for staff is are we going when do we plan to vote on the strategic priorities or is that tonight? I think you tonight can frame and make a motion to vote to change. So, we can we can probably put it up on the screen so you know exactly what that is. Um, okay. Well, we'll need a little bit of time if we're going to do it on the board. Are you What are you proposing that one be reframed? Yeah, two. Um, but in really minor ways.

Okay. Are you able to? Yeah, sure. Are folks done otherwise? Yeah, council member Hudis. Um, another area that there's been some work done and I know there was a vote taken on it um that was supportive of moving forward with uh some uh changes to our historic preservation initiative. Um, is that something that we need to talk about tonight or does that fit? Uh, it most likely would fit under priority three.

Okay. But it doesn't it it's not one of the bullets or even something that's in progress. Is that correct? I thought it was in progress. Let me hand it over to Joel, our community development director.

Thank you for the question. Um, as I recall, and we'll go back and take a look, um, the direction was to get through the objective de development standard update, uh, and then come and look at that those, I believe it was six areas that related to historic preservation that were brought forward to the council. So, if I could just follow up, um, is that part of the bullet complete objective design standards or should that language be added to reflect ongoing work?

We can definitely add a bullet if the council's interested to I can't remember what the upcoming uh probably works. Okay, thanks. Council member,

I've been resisting, but I'll go to this anyway. Um, and you know, I think I talked about this before. Number number 11, I know, is one of your favorites, but what I I struggle with is it's what's listed here is mostly taking care of about 25 people out of 33,000 people. And yet, it's 10% of our strategic priorities. Um and again when I I look at you know okay nice nice accomplished bullets that's great going forward what's in progress is a lot of continue participating continue participating continue to manage manage partnership participate in somebody's plan. These aren't big exciting things that seem like they need a priority to make sure they happen. Staff's going to do it anyway kind of thing. Um, again, you know, if I were to eliminate something, my first choice would be number 11 or rework number 11 into something that actually might have another result. I think Mr. Hudis mentioned uh including something else in this or something, but as is, it feels like not very much of a strategic priority that's going to be accomplished going forward other than to make sure Yeah. we keep keep participating. Sure. Yeah, I'll I'll chime in and then um go to Vice Mayor Risto. I feel very strongly that this should remain a strategic priority, though I think it's worth refining and that's why I I have some suggested language on this, I'll just say I think homelessness re I know homelessness regionally is getting worse and there are, you know, um not to get too deep into this, there are as of the last 3 months three people living in the park by my house. Um so it's the problem is not getting better, it's getting worse. Uh and I think if we, you know, look away from this problem, you know, the

the challenge of homelessness, it will get much worse. Um I think we've been doing some important sort of stabilizing work. What I think the the council needs to think about is how to take a more comprehensive approach, which I think is, you know, involves a few different things. Um, but one is addressing folks in our community that have behavioral health needs and we have dollars to support that if um that's something we're we're interested in doing this budget year through the opioid settlement funding. Uh but also with San Jose taking a much more punitive approach and you know many have contextualized this or or characterized this as criminalizing homelessness. Um, uh, I think we are going to inevitably end up with more folks coming into our community, plus you have the added challenge of cities like Certino passing RV bans. Um, so I think there's a which is going to lead to more RVs coming into Los Gatos. So I think there's a variety of of sort of again more regional and comprehensive and those might sound like buzzwords, but I I mean them. um approaches on this uh because I think if we don't this issue is going to get a lot worse and then we'll be hearing from our residents much more on it. Vice Mayor Risto,

thank you. I mean, one thought I had is yes, maybe it's about 20 to 30 individuals out of a out of a town of 30,000. um the presence a unhoused and whether we can provide services or whether they are behind people's houses or in parks affects every single resident and so you know what we're doing for them we're doing for our community. I also agree with council member Moore's comment and you know this has come up at cities association. We really do need to be thinking regionally because as each municipality starts to put different rules in about RVs or about cleaning out um tents. If we are not aligned um we're going to have um the problem moving back and forth. And I think we need to be focusing on the homeless that we have in our community that we know how we can address it and try to wrap that up but also be in alignment with our nearby communities. And I know that our town staff does carry out a lot of work. You know, our police department, our um assistant manager puts a lot of work into it. I would not assume that if it came off of priorities that staff would put time into it. I think the reason our staff puts so much time and energy is because it is a strategic priority. And so I think there is more we can do and I think we need to add to this and move forward. But I would be very much opposed to taking this off of a strategic priority.

Council member, did you have a comment? Yeah. Can you repeat what you just said? You wanted to take I would be opposed to removing it. Okay. Okay, because the suggestion was to remove it from strategic priorities. Okay. So, my concern is that if we take a comprehensive approach, um how do we propose our budget to support it? Uh being that we're in a deficit and if we are going to anticipate much more growth and much more needs, again, um it is going to take a a chunk out of our budget.

Yeah, I think I think that's a serious I'll I'll uh respond to that. But I think that's a serious um problem. I think a we do have some money for this. So we have a pot of aboutund 120 to $150,000 of opioid settlement funding that we have not tapped into yet. And that can support specifically folks with behavioral health and substance use challenges who I think are by far the most acute and the ones that we get the most I think complaints about. you know, the folks that are sleeping in downtown who are unwell, who are business owners really want to um you know, both compassionately and sometimes not you get off their uh uh stoop. Um and so I think we have money for that. Now, in the in terms of like the more regional approach, I think that's a legitimate issue you raise. I think it'll require conversations with our partners like Campbell and and Saratoga, but Campbell actually stepped up to fund the study that was done. um cost $100,000. And so I I I think you know again I would just say at a high level and and I'm not suggesting you know particular budget asks on this at this time but I think at a high level if we look away from this problem it's going to get worse and then it's going to become a lot more expensive to address in the future. That's my my take. Yeah, go ahead. Um so I'm just throwing an idea out um in that you know I I reflecting on uh Tom Picro's comments um at the beginning of the meeting where you know we've developed a roadmap and we seem to have despite some fits and starts the ability

to have a sustained effort over a period of time. And um again, I'm kind of looking for where that would be. At one point, we did have a strategic priority of uh senior services. Um and so I'm I'm kind of wondering whether Yeah. Um it's it Yeah. Um, so I'm wondering if maybe 10 and 11 um might be combined, particularly as uh many of our older adults are uh facing significant um uh significant issues with loneliness, with um mental health challenges. And uh there are continued items in the uh roadmap to keep focused on some of those things. Um plus a number of our unhoused or older adults as well. And so I'm I'm just throwing an idea out there that would it maybe make sense to rewrite um number 10 to include uh unhoused um residents and maybe maybe some terminology like underserved um residents uh in there. Uh again, I'm not strongly advocating. I'm just kind of throwing an idea out there to try to uh see if we can combine some things.

I'll just say, well, I I I like the the sentiment and agree with a lot of what you just said. For me, I think that is taking focus off of both issues and I think those are, you know, while sometimes connected, I think they're pretty distinct. Um, and and I think if you did that, you wouldn't necessarily be changing staff work a whole lot on these. I think you just be combining, you know, terminology. So, I I wouldn't generally be supportive of that. Um, though again, I think both could, you know, use some refining if we wanted to do that. And I have some language suggestions on 11. But, Vice Risto,

thank you. I'm not hearing staff say that we have too many underlying priorities. I mean, we have three top priorities. I think if we were talking about trying to move another one up and now we have four and that's a lot. Um, and I don't see the advantage to trying to push things together that have very discreet different needs. And if we're not changing the workload and changing the projects, I'm fine with 11 priorities overall. I I don't think it matters how many we have. It matters how much work is needed and it matters that the top three is where the primary focus is. So for me, unless somebody wants to take something off the top three and replace it with something else, I don't see a need to change these priorities at all.

Council member Badami, I wouldn't uh want to see a fourth top priority. I like the three that we have. As far the additional priorities go, I do like the two separate ones for the unhoused and the um older adults, and I'm interested in hearing the refinements that the mayor would like to make to the wording to make sure that I would be in agreement with that.

Perfect. Okay. Um I actually sent those to staff. Um uh I can read it. I can read the the one for unhoused right now. Um, so the the refinement would be continue to engage community service providers to meet the individualized and complex needs of unhoused residents while pursuing a more comprehensive regional approach. Council member Badami,

I would have a question for staff and and how much staff time would that involve to try to even attempt that.

So, let me Thank you. That's a very good question. So, let me just address the top three priorities. Your top priority in emergency preparedness and wildfire. You created a new division and hired a new employee manager to manage that. Your second priority is predominantly managed by the by finance. You have a department related to that. Your third priority, the predominant amount falls to community development in terms of the housing element itself and historic preservation. On the last two items, there are typically things that would fall to a community services or other department, which we do not have. And so most of the activity, you can tell it's continue to engage because there's collateralized duties that go from grants that are issued out of the library uh to um engagement on the regional like the report that Campbell put out that came from planning the uh contracts and the part-time work that comes out of the town's manager office managed by the assistant town manager. So there's a lot of collateralized duties. There is a need I believe in terms of approaching the having the appropriate regulations. You're seeing it in a variety of cities. Some have gone really strongly and others are going a little more lightly to address their issues. And I do believe that if you don't want to be the last one because you'll end up with the problem and financially won't be able to address it. Where I'm concerned um and I agree with a comprehensive approach. I'm just concerned there's not much we'll be able to make movement on comprehensively. So we could bring ordinances forward. We may be able to get some services, but it won't it'll be challenging to be comprehensive if it's not if it's not a top priority. And I just don't believe we have bandwidth to add that on as an additional one and expect significant movement. And that's that's the concern I would have.

Yeah, I I would maybe the word comprehensive is strong. Um um but I uh I what you just shared bringing forward a few key ordinances and collaborating on a few key initiatives with other cities. That's what I would have in mind. If the word comprehensive comes off strong, I'd be fine to to delete comprehensive. I I guess what I'm the word comprehensive I think it could be changed. What I'm trying to get at there is a more we have a very peacemeal approach. It'd be a more unified approach or a more something where we have some sort of plan that is at a higher level than just you know we have these three things we do.

I I know I see where you're going. I'm trying to look at the language and see how we could reframe it. Right now the way it's written

is very is is limited in terms of from a workload perspective. Yeah. We're engaging. We have some contracts and managing that is not a significantly high workload. The real question comes when we start talking about ordinance development. That's a multi-EP departmental engagement. And so the town attorney and I would work on framing it. You would engage the police department, community development, the um PPW. I mean, there's just a lot that would go into it. And so if we ended up with two, three ordinances, is that something that council would say, "Hey, that's great." Or one additional contract for an additional service, but it may not necessarily be all tied in. We may not be able to get that comprehensiveness without significant engagements. I'm just I just don't know. I think we maybe need to frame a little bit more what the outcome like what what's the at the end of next year what would you expect to be the total picture and what would be listed in the accomplishments for that goal whatever the goal is if you could kind of refine that a little bit more maybe I could give you more info.

Yeah absolutely and I don't want to dominate the convers I'll I'll respond and then other folks please uh uh jump in. So um and Vice Mayor Risto suggested coordinated which is maybe a better word there. Um uh but the I think the outcomes is potentially engaging a service provider to help with our behavioral health challenges uh or people that have severe behavioral health challenges that we can't that we're currently not helping, right? That that our current services do not address, right? The um providing food once or twice a week doesn't help someone with schizophrenia deal with that challenge. and it's never going to get them housed. Um, so I think that's one sort of thing that you would you would bring a new contractor on to distribute money that we have to deal with a particular need. Um, which is the individualized and complex portion. Um, and a more comprehensive or whatever, a more regional approach would be what you said, an ordinance that addresses something like RVs or overnight camping. Um, that that correctly balances our values with uh, you know, the the need to not let the problem get out of hand. I think if you asked me what is Hold on. I'm sorry. I'm getting messages from staff. Um staff, you're welcome to jump in here at any time. I think if you ask me, Chris, over the course of the next year, what do you see? If we say unhoused, you say what over the course of the next year? First, we need to disincentivize growing the population of folks that we currently have that would fall under this category. We have some

very acute cases of individuals that have been in our community for many years that are tied to this community that were providing some level of service. But if that problem doubles and triples, our ability to service those who have been here for 10, 20 years would become very challenging. Second, I would say a spray and prey approach, which is what we're doing, where we feel good about providing meal service, and we feel good about bringing in a nonprofit to provide, you know, fish to folks that we're hoping to help teach how to fish, I think, is good in the short term, but doesn't lead to a long-term positive outcome of getting them off the street. And then lastly, we just don't have something that gets over the significant barriers of mental health and addiction. And so if Chris, what would your answer be? It would be first addressing the ordinances that we need in place to ensure that the population is not something that would continue to grow and secondly engaging with our service providers and regionally to determine what is a plan without necessarily implementing various steps in those plans that are financial. So, if we're going to dedicate resources and time, it would be to partnering and seeing Campbell, you've created this study that uh beggets a regional approach. What would that look like for Los Gatos? How would that fit in with other communities and kind of refine and draft something that's more reflective of a vision of where we go? And then in subsequent years, start to build on that with comprehens more comprehensive services or determining the resource allocation that you would put there. Council member Hudis. Um,

couple of reasons why I'm receptive to the idea of expanding that definition a little bit. Um, one is just to acknowledge we've been very fortunate to have the mayor so plugged into the county um that we have gotten uh some attention from the county. Um and secondly, staff uh with regard to uh the very innovative uh grant that staff worked on with uh Congressman Licardo regarding the mobile navigation uh services. And I didn't really understand fully until I attended a meeting today with West Valley Community Services. And basically the idea is to provide um an RV that has showers and uh space for um are unhoused to receive the counseling services and the case management um you know that they need. And I think it's a very u wonderful idea. It's probably a little bit away but the money is there. There's money been allocated. So, we're in kind of a fortunate position now to have made a bit of progress. Um, I do worry about the future. Um, and looking out a bit since this is a strategic plan and going back to the days when, uh, Loscatoos was, uh, not on the map of county services and, uh, was essentially a net provider of funds, um, but didn't receive its fair share of services. And as our older adult population, I keep coming back to that, um is growing and will need these services more, I think we need um some kind of a vision on how

to sustain uh some of the good results that we've had. And um having a coordinated uh regional approach um I think could uh be beneficial to us, you know, looking out a couple of years. So just, you know, uh I don't know that I have complete agreement with this language or maybe with something else, but I think there's something there that says we need to continue to work on this. Vice Mayor Risto,

thank you. I I think it's been stated. I think our town manager kind of broke it out in a way I was thinking about that I kind of bifurcate the what the outcomes would be. One would be that um with the ability to perhaps use opioid settlement money and with an outside um party that can provide kind of the counseling and the services that some of our unhoused need um to work on addressing real issues and reduce our population by getting them services and hopefully getting them housed. And then number two, stop the growth and reverse the growth of the homeless population by making sure that we are coordinated. Maybe replace comprehensive with coordinated, but coordinating our ordinances and what we're doing with our nearby municipalities so that if one community or two communities create different RV ordinances and we don't have one, we could end up with all of the RVs going into Loscatoos. And I don't want to play whack-a-ole with the unhoused. I just think that we need to be on the same page with everybody else so that we can continue to manage and provide the services that we've been able to do for our present unhoused, but not with this idea that we're going to continue to provide these same services forever. That the next step really needs to be how do you get treatment? How do you get services? How do you get help? How do you get into housing? Um because we are so fortunate to have faith-based groups that do the bulk of the heavy lifting. Our town has provided funding. Our staff provides, you know, uh some coordination, but without these faith-based groups, we wouldn't have any of these services. And I don't want to rely on that going into the future. Um any volunteer group is as good as the

last volunteer there. And I don't think that's a strategy. I think we take advantage of what's going on and then help move people to the next level as much as we can in a focused way and make sure that people don't keep falling into homelessness in Loscatoos. Uh, Council Rodami,

I can see that we're building some consensus here. So, being that we address strategic priorities annually, um I can see us adding this language this year, um especially after hearing council member Hudis um state that the the money is there and the mayor is there, so why not? What do we have to lose? And perhaps, you know, this year we could see some metrics and how the housing population has moved, if it's moved at all. that doesn't necessarily mean move out of loss status, but have we been able to to help these people um get them the care and the the meds that they need. So, I would originally I was thinking how is this going to work and and maybe the wording could be worked on a little bit more by staff because I don't want our staff to take up a lot of time, but again, the mayor is pretty well connected uh as well as council member Hudis and who knows, maybe the rest of the council members are. But I I would support it. I if I may take a stab at language.

Yes. And and and assistant town manager. Yeah. And then we'll have to talk about what does this mean in terms of resources. So what I'm hearing is something along the lines of continue to engage community partners to enhance a coordinated approach to address the needs of unhoused residents. That's what I'm hearing without going into the specificity. But if it's a different approach.

Yeah. I I think I mean I think you could just nyx the word I think you replace the word comprehensive with coordinated and and I I like adding individualized and complex because the other the other thing with this that I I wanted to touch on um is I think it's really important and I think I've heard everyone say some version of this to know who our current unhoused residents are so we can provide service the the services that they need and then that allows us to sort you know, stop the bleeding from other cities. Um, but I actually don't think we have a good idea of who our folks. I mean, we know some, but we have the pit count every year, which like fluctuates by, you know, dozens and dozens. And I don't think our population is fluctuating by dozens and dozens. So, that's why I think the I prefer the the individualized language because that gets to we need to know who our folks are so we can serve them.

Yeah,

we generally know. I mean again it fluctuates and there's individuals that come and go that we don't necessarily have a deep understanding but I know police and others have engaged with a number of individuals including our service providers. What I have to say is if we're going along the lines here, even though it's still an additional priority, there's going to be an expectation of movement from the council and and I would I would have to shift staffing and financial resources to support doing more than just engaging service providers. And I'm not saying it's not the direction to go. I just want you to be mindful to be able to do that. I can't rely on collateralized duties on multiple employees to try to manage pieces. You need something somebody [snorts] to be able to coordinate all that. And it's either a third party with financial commitment doing that or it's internally somebody that's allocated to it to take the workload off the shoulders of staff as collateral duties.

The assistant town manager still has your hand. [laughter]

Um thank you Katie Nur, assistant town manager. And um I hearing both both sides. Um I just want to ask a question. Perhaps I'm wondering if this fine-tuning of language is really just to kind of give us more direction and guidance of where ultimately you want us to move in that direction rather than saying take on new initiatives, do more things, spend more money. Um perhaps it's as you know the way that we're I envision how we are handling we have our three top priorities which we must make progress on. We spend a considered amount of energy and resources on them. Our additional priorities as we have choices to make and competing priorities come up that's very helpful for us to make our decisions. It also helps uh us to know kind of when opportunities present themselves we can take advantage of them knowing this is a priority of council. So with that kind of lens, is that what we're going for with this language that as opportunities present themselves assuming there is bandwidth and it's not taking away from other priorities? Yes. Let's do go in this direction.

Correct. Absolutely. Okay. Then then is this fine if if we have we're all on the same page with expectations? So long as the list that comes back on accomplishments, is it now matching what you would expect in a top priority? Yeah, we'll we'll make as good of effort as we can with the resources available along the lines of what Katie mentioned. Absolutely. And I'll just say I think I've been super impressed with the progress we've made. I haven't never once have I looked at whatever version of this we had over the last three years and said, you know, you really missed the mark on that. I think each year we've done incredibly well and I've been very impressed with staff. So, I don't think we're I'm not setting crazy new expectations by any means.

Okay. So long as that's clear and thank you Katie for clarifying that additional priorities are as staff resources are available. Um good. So I'm assuming that what's on there proposed to continue to engage community service providers to meet the individualized and complex needs of unhouse residents while pursuing a more coordinated regional approach is something that shared by the rest of the council. And if that's a desire that I would request that you make a motion second to revise priority 11 to reflect that language. Vice Mayor Risto. Uh yes. And do you also need a motion on the other priorities since we didn't discuss?

I would first do this one so we can document that one and then we can go back to the rest. Okay. So, I move to approve the changes to um strategic priority number 11 under additional priorities to reflect um the new language that says continue to engage community service providers to meet the individualized and complex needs of unhouse residents while pursuing a more coordinated regional approach. Council member Hus. Second. Thank you. Any other comments? I'll call the question. All those in favor?

I.

Any opposed? None. Passes unanimously. Okay. Um, if we have the will and energy, I have a a couple thoughts on the the traffic one. And and you know, I I sent language to staff. I don't know if this is I would be very open to to feedback on this. I I'm just trying to get at what I discussed ebikes and more creative solutions to congestion. I think do we have that proposed language that I think it's it reads implement transportation demand management and traffic calming efforts to mitigate traffic congestion improve safety for all users pursue tangible bicycle and pedestrian improvements and explore innovative pilot solutions to improve mobility. I think um I'm not opposed to it. It just sounds like that we're adding a lot more work to this priority if we're saying to add pilot programs, but maybe that's always part of problem solving. And I I I'd be curious to understand what staff thinks that means if we're specifically calling out pursuing pilot programs. Um because I know sometimes something comes forward and we say, "Okay, we'll try this for a while." But if we overtly call out pilot programs, what does that mean to you?

Yeah, I actually appreciate the question and this discussion because I do think there's two different ways to look at pilot programs. And one way is one we're already working on aggressively that you'll see tangible evidence of later this year, which is the traffic model for the town. And that's really what's going to allow us to start really visualizing what's happening and demonstrating to you um in real time kind of not real time but how traffic moves and what that means and what the implications are for different changes like we can show you a model and say if this and staff's going to start messaging me if I'm overselling it but you know if we close this road you know here's what the here's where traffic will go from there. Um and and I think that that in some regards could be considered a pilot and we're already planning that if but if pilot means um um I'm the name the word's escaping me but um but quick build bike lanes like that's a different um that's a [clears throat] different effort right and a different kind of thing that would be really really hard for us to implement like those quick build solutions and and I think the community would be given pause by those. Um so I I think I I to me if if pilot can mean demonstrated through computer modeling yes if you're expecting quick build boots on the ground infrastructure changes then I'd like to ask that you revisit that language.

Yes.

Right. Because I think what echoed through my head with um pilot was, you know, years ago when there was the one-way pilot with di diagonal parking on Santa Cruz Avenue, which was somewhat of a disaster, but also was a lot of work and um learned a few things that I think some of us could have predicted, but you never know. But I think modeling then allows I didn't think about the model. modeling allows us to say, okay, you know, like one pilot was the right turn prohibitions out of um the Almond Grove on Saturdays between 10 and 3. Nobody's enforcing that. However, it's embedded in the mapping apps and it does eliminate um mapping apps from sending traffic through downtown into the Almond Grove. further refinement of that or testing out what if you made closed a road, what if you made some other turn prohibitions is a little scary to just put the signs up and have the mapping apps now try to figure out how to get around it because you can unleash a whole bunch of monkeys, right? So having the having the mapping software or having the traffic model software really gives us a lot of options. So to me that's that sounds really great.

If I'm correct, Mr. Mayor, what you're proposing expands upon what currently is limited to more bicycle and pedestrian improvements to just all mobility and opens the door to if something comes up where we have staff resources and time available since it's an additional priority to look at maybe something cutting edge, new, different that affects all mobility could include cars from beach traffic to bicycles down Blossom Hill. That's fair game. Correct.

Okay. And so Nicole, in terms of implementing that when staff resources are available, is that broader priority? What kind of implications do you see that having?

Um, that's fine. I don't know that we have this are going to have staff resources. I mean, we have the modeling going on. We h we actually have um the Blossom Hill Safe Streets for All Federal grant that we're starting to work on. So, we're already going to be working on on evaluating doing corridor study there to modify and make changes. I would also add that this town's very fortunate in that you have a town engineer with 30 plus years of traffic engineering experience. We also have a traffic engineer who has another 40 years of traffic engineering experience and a retired annuitant who has 40 years of traffic engineering experience. This town has a really robust level of experience in traffic engineering. And when we look at the universe of work that was done before we were number of us are new and when we look at the universe of pilot projects that were done before we were here we collectively can't think of anything that wasn't tried that might work because if we could think of something we would have tried it by now which is why we're really diving deep on the modeling and really going to try to rely on that. So I think I mean and we are pretty pretty maxed out in our traffic engineering team right now in terms of just just how much work we're taking on. I think it would be really hard for us to take on new pilot projects that we try to implement.

Council member Hudis.

Yeah, I think um I think the modeling is a terrific idea and I think it also dubtales with our need to do evacuation planning um very much. So I think uh that fits with you know the pilot project idea but when I just read the language of pursue pilot projects to improve mo mobility it looks like it opens the doors to some things that I don't think um we're really interested in like you know e scooter ebike sharing programs or and I don't know I don't fully understand quick build, but it seems like there's some other kinds of things that could be viewed uh to fit if with with the language as it's proposed. So, I'm just I'm just raising that when I read you know, pilot project to improve mobility. What jumps to mind is uh you know, ebike and e- scooter sharing programs.

That was not what I had in mind, but thanks for raising that. Yeah, council ready. You know, I to me there's at odds purposes in this sentence where we say traffic calming efforts to mitigate traffic congestion. Most of the time our calming efforts create traffic congestion. I don't I mean this sentence sort of doesn't make sense. I think we're fooling ourselves that we're mitigating traffic congestion. You know, certainly if you look at the the Blossom Hill, we slowed it down for it to be safer, but we created terrible traffic congestion. And we're now talking about plans on Blossom Hill that'll probably narrow the street and create congestion, not mitigate it. So, the way it's worded, I just feels like we're fooling ourselves. Yeah, the first half is actually I I didn't touch the first half and I think that's how the the current priority reads. Um perhaps it would make sense to say implement transportation demand management and traffic calming efforts and then move mitigate traffic congestion to specifically the innovative pilot solutions because I'm thinking about innovative solutions for downtown beach traffic downtown traffic in particular. And I I'm to be clear, I wasn't thinking quick build I think is is something different. Yeah.

And maybe the modeling helps us think about how to do some better um improvement of traffic congestion. You know, one I I just criticized kind of the Blossom Hill project, but in reality, if you think about putting congestion points at the at the edges of our town, then traffic can't come in, right? If a lot of people use it's a big wide street, a lot of people use it to instead of getting on 85 that's too busy, you come across Blossom Hill. If you constrain that street at Belgados, the edge of Los Gatos, you now may discourage more traffic from coming down Blossom Hill that ends up in front of Blossom Hill School as a as a congestion. That would be a more strategic way to think about where calming may actually help congestion other places in in the city. And maybe the modeling gets us to think think that way. If I may, Mr. Mayor, um, based on what I'm hearing from Nicole, however we revise the scope of this, we're probably going to be very limited to doing the dudick evacuation and traffic modeling and looking at information and managing the current activity that we're doing and there may not be a whole lot of movement. And so for what it's worth, if we do adjust to enhance the scope, so long as we understand that to the extent we have resources to do more, we will. But if we don't, it may be just limited to what was mentioned.

Yeah. And I'll I'll just in response to that, I think there's some really exciting potential projects to work with our regional partners like VTA on. And so I think that is where this opens the door. If VTA is willing to take on, you know, a significant portion of the work um and and work with us on on a project, then then I think there's no reason not to pursue that sort of pilot. Um and and I think I mean my understanding I appreciate staff um um being very very clear with us. I think it's clear to me that on additional priorities, all of this is is staff load contingent, workload contingent. I don't think, you know, um I'm not asking anyone to stay uh uh later than I uh you all already stay at work.

Yeah, Vice Mayor Risto.

Um yeah, I don't want to get too deep in Well, first of all, I would say maybe we can change it to um instead of explore innovative pilot solutions, um explore traffic modeling. or you know put the traffic modeling specifically in there. Um because the other thing is after the traffic modeling if it gives us results that make a lot of sense then um structural changes could follow. Um the other thing um I'm I'm I think council member Renie touched on two things. One is you know with traffic you can never eliminate bottlenecks. You can just determine where they are. And so, you know, sometimes pushing a bottleneck to another place will change driving behavior. Um, the pilot or not the pilot, but the uh study that'll happen on Blossom Hill Road that'll actually go to Camden. Um, which instead of going two lanes in each direction would potentially be one lane in each direction with a center turn lane. Well, left turns create a lot of congestion. So, when somebody's in the left lane that's supposed to be flowing forward and they try and make a left turn, that lane stops. drivers fly around the right side and it makes for a very uncomfortable place to bike. And I realize that it's uh it's an offset kind of argument, but the better you the calmer you can make a road, the more likely people are going to then walk or bike along there. Whereas when you've got chaos of two lanes flying around in each direction and zooming around left turners, um there's more crashes, there's more issues. So um you know but that's that's a philosophical thing that um we can go to. I just I'm wondering if we change that to just talk about the software it doesn't mean that if we learn something amazing that it can't be implemented but I think focusing on that

I mean speak to that and then propose something that everybody can jump in and tear apart which I expect them to do. Um, if we're just looking at the software, it's really not we're not talking strategic, right? That's an act an operational activity. We're going to be going through the dudick evaluation. We're going to see what the information says because much of it is also going to inform the first priority, which is a top priority of emergency preparedness in wildfire. What I'm hearing is really centered around what came out of our 2025 community survey, which was the top issue raised by residents of traffic. And so when I'm trying to reframe this to really address what I'm hearing and what and knowing that our capacity will limit what we can do and it's as expected since it's not a top priority. If we rewrite it to say implement transportation demand management, traffic calming, and other innovative efforts to mitigate traffic congestion, and improve safety for all users, including bicycle and pedestrian improvements, that's pretty broad. and knowing that we're still limited in capacity for what we could accomplish, but I think it hits what the mayor is talking about because I there's an initiative that we're working on that directly relates to traffic, but it still encompasses everything else. That's good with me. Council member Bami,

I would support the town manager's uh recommendation. I just feel at this point we're just doing window dressing with words. [laughter] Agreed. I think that's a good good point, Council Member Badami. Thank you. Um, okay. I would Oh, okay. Uh, we'll go to our uh emergency manager and then I'll move the manager's motion.

Thank you. Just want to make one clarification with our um evacuation modeling that we're doing with our contractor. Just as far as timing, they're anticipating they're going to be working through this and we will start to get products that we could probably use throughout the process, but up to up to two years maximum um including time for our town engineers and stuff to work through all that. So although we will be getting useful information out of that throughout the process, I don't want to think that we will have this done super fast. This takes process. Thank you. Yes, Council Member Bami.

So, do we need a motion? Um, at this time, I'd be happy to make one. So, I would move to accept the town manager's recommendation on additional priority number five. As far as this wording rewarding of priority number five and to and to read implement transportation demand management, traffic calming and other innovative efforts to mitigate traffic congestion and improve safety for all users, including bicycle and pedestrian improvements. Exactly what I meant. Yeah. Second.

Great. Any other comments? Seeing none, I will call the question. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? None. Passes unanimously. Okay. Um, any other questions or thoughts on strategic priorities before we move to budget? Yes, Council Member Hudis.

Um, I just wanted to recognize uh the work on uh historic preservation. Um, it it looks like it was confirmed that it is in process. I just wanted to maybe add some words to the third bullet in in progress if that's the right place to do it. Um to complete objective design standards and uh tech take next steps to explore areas of historic preservation. Are are you referring to the document that has the accomplishments, council member?

Yes. So the only items those accomplishments are there for reference. The only authoritative document is the strategic priorities. And so we're trying this is not a this is not necessarily the totality of activity that's occurring in each of the 11 priority areas. So I just wanted clarification that we're still able to move forward the work on historic preservation without requiring a change. Thank you for the question. Um, yes, we will again as I stated before once the effort for modifying the objective development standards and guidelines is complete.

Okay, then I don't have any need to change anything.

Okay. Thank you. No, and I appreciate you you referencing this document. I I forgot a comment I wanted to make. I think this is incredibly I think this is an incredible document. Um, and this is, you know, my first time seeing this. I think it's, you know, it really is a testament to to the work that that is being done. It's, you know, for a very small, lean team, this, I think, is an incredible amount of work um uh to accomplish. I think it's something everyone at the town of Los should be incredibly proud of. I mean, it's I would imagine, you know, cities that have twice the population and twice the amount of staff have shorter lists than this. So, um I think it's very impressive. The one comment I was going to make is I don't know, you know, this is just food for thought. It would be amazing to be able to to show this to the community somehow, you know, outside of uh this meeting uh where thank you to the four um members of the community that are here. Um uh but I think it'd be very, you know, I think it'd be great to be able to put this in some more digestible format online on social media to to show the community all the good work the town is doing. Um, so you know, that's just a a a thought for you all to to think about because I think this is very persuasive about, you know, how great you all are.

Well, I want to thank you for that, but I need to compliment the entire team of employees and Katie who helped compile this from all the department heads in terms of the line share of the work. I think what was important is we is what you just recognized. The things that we see at the council level are very limited. the amount of what's going internally is phenomenal and then the work and the hours and the stress that goes into it is significant and I think yes recognizing the lion share and heavy lifting that we do is important. So we will work internally with folks that are 100 times better than me in how we post and market and show the successes that we have.

Excellent. Okay. Um uh so we'll now move to budget. Um uh questions or comments on budget.

Council member. And so I obviously it's not a time to get into detail, but a couple high level. Um on the you on the budget approach slide, you estimated this year we're going to be 4.3 million positive and you said a big contributor to that was interest income which is is going to go down because we're probably two two percentage points below where we used to be. How much was the is the interest contributing this year? Is it 2 million 3 million? Um removing mark to market. I will turn it to our mark to market please. That's not useful.

So as a part of the midyear that you'll hear next week um we are making a slight adjustment up of about 300 or so thousand uh in to the investment earnings. Some of the bigger drivers to the 4.3 to the good are really related to some additional tax revenues as well as some updated year-end estimates from departments. Okay. And so we're going to see more of that at some point in the future.

We're going to see it at our next council meeting, but in terms Let me just caveat the sales tax. We we're estimating what the receipts are going to be. We haven't necessarily received that funding. So, while the midyear provides a snapshot into what the forecast is for the end of the year, it doesn't mean we're going to end up at 4.3. It could be much lower.

And then the second one, um, on second page of budget approach, I think it's second page, you talk about 3.1 million deficit for 2627. Um, oh actually before I go to that, so the 4.3 also includes we we started the year. So actually it's the same question. What was where did we start our budget deficit when we first made this year's budget plan? I'm trying to remember. Was it about 1.5 million in the red?

We I think we after engaging the finance commission on the assumptions we got down to about 1.8 8 million and then the council ended up rely its initial budget approval being about a $900,000 uh um projection from the reserves. Okay. And so that's changing from 900 to 3.1 we think. Again with the conservative um assumptions that's what we're projecting. But again, every year we've projected deficits, we've generally ended up better than the projections.

And and the 4.3 includes we've done a couple budget adjustments along the way where we actually used more money and I can't add them all up in my head. So if you had added them to the 900, we're maybe closer to one and a half million. I think what we've at uh the majority of the increases centered around attorneys cost and increasing contracts for attorneys dealing with development. Um I don't know the exact number of where we would have grown to for the current budget in terms of what was the original but this 4.3 assume includes all of those budget adjustments we did.

Yeah. the the current the 4.3 assumes everything that we know of as of the December 31st date and an estimate based on department by department information of where we think we're going to end up at the end of the year. And what we don't know is all the different transactions that go in into that and and the assumptions aren't necessarily assumptions that are developed from finance. They're coming from department by department. Okay. Yeah. And so I don't want to dig into it too deep. Just wanted some help my head a little bit. We'll dig into it more next council meeting it sounds like. Thank you, Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. I guess um you know I one of the things that came up in public comment and I've been thinking about since I think before I was mayor is the public restroom. And we, you know, I know we have a lot of deferred um a lot of deferred capital projects, but this is something that kind of impacts economic vitality. It impacts being a welcoming community. I don't know how or when we can get to that. And can you remind me what is the cost the ongoing cost of the portaotty downtown? That's a good question. Um, do do you remember from Okay, Katie will look that up, but I will offer that we're going to rebid that restroom service and um I've been talking with our superintendent about getting a trailer mounted like more attractive unit as a temporary fix rather than cuz I think the permanent restroom I don't even think we ended up successfully agreeing on a location. So, we have some work to do there. But I think they do make units that are more attractive

um that I think can be more aesthetically pleasing, but still are temporary and don't require permanent plumbing. So, we actually were planning to bid that service this spring um because I our current agreement ends uh June 30th. So, um and I'll get we'll get back to you on the cost.

Okay, great. I mean, first of all, I appreciate it. I appreciate that we have something there. I see women, children. I see people using it a lot. And so I appreciate that staff continues to think about it and that you're looking for something more attractive because it's not hideous, but it certainly could look nicer in such a high visibility location. And I do remember all the conversation where we we didn't even decide where it should be and what it should look like and how it should go. So, um, as long as we're being temporary, I appreciate any tiny improvement that can happen along the way. Thanks, Council Member Hudis.

Um, I'm referring to the staff report on page six, I believe. Um, talking about there's a paragraph uh toward toward the middle to the bottom of the page that talks about vehicles and buildings will be the first areas of focus. And I'm wondering if there's been any more um work or whether the town will present a plan to reduce the inventory of vehicles and assets um such that low utilization vehicles will be disposed of and leased or rented as needed. I remember um a shockingly high number of vehicles and assets that the town owns. And um I also saw somewhere else in a capital part about uh creating outdoor space for fleet management services I think. And so I wanted to come back to uh this whether there's been any progress or whether there's any plans to reduce a number of vehicles.

Yes, let me speak to that. I think the project you're referring to is an expansion of the capacity for fleet services to work on larger car larger vehicles that do not fit currently into the bay. So that's that project. directly to your point of the vehicle [snorts] fleet. The last bullet point under uh priority two under in progress is an audit of fleet and associated operations by an outside consultant. Uh parks and public works uh the director and I are currently working on the scope of services of what we would want to put out there to determine the cost associated with doing that. Our intent is to be able to take a look at the vehicle fleet. Not necessarily from the perspective of we want to reduce it, tell us how, but from the perspective of evaluate our fleet, evaluate our practices, evaluate our needs and utilization, and then provide us recommendations um without a presupposition of whether it's decrease, increase, sell, just give us the best practice. as long as we're going to take an objective look at it, I think it's um that's probably going to accomplish that. Um my again reaction to the the number is that we really need to look at how we reduce the inventory because it um it requires additional labor. it requires uh additional expenditure and um I'm you know would hope that that study would u be a be objective enough to look at the possibility of reducing inventory. Um it will I just we're generally when you write an audit scope it's more generic and broad and the information that comes out that would lend itself to a reduction would be identifying low utilization equipment or vehicles where there's not

a secondary purpose that would necessitate you retaining it in which case the recommendation would be divest yourself of it. Yeah, I I think it's important to pursue that. I don't want to see us in the position where we are retaining vehicles and laying off workers.

Yeah, council ready.

So, I I wanted to make the comment. I heard parks and public works loud and clear that they don't have the capacity, but um I continue to support the the community garden and we actually got a lot of of comments that came in about we got public restrooms and community garden. Those were the two two items that we got a lot of comments on and and you know during the year for town manager feedback every month, what else can I do? I said, "Get some category ones done so we can move the community garden up into our capital projects." And I just need to make the comment that I'm still very supportive of getting this darn project done. Uh I I completely agree with that. I have I have I would actually suggest those that the public restroom and the community garden move up to tier one. And again, I fully recognize that that we want to prioritize the internal projects that are key to our operations, but these have been ideas, you know, as long as I've been on the council for the past 3 years or so. And I really think they would both do so much good for the community. And I think both of these, I think, need a design their design studies need to be funded first for my recollection. And so I think we need to at least start there. I I I think you know I I feel as strongly as council member Renie does um uh that the community garden needs to move forward and the public restroom needs to move forward and I would my particular feedback on the CIP for for this the purposes of this discussion would be to move both of those into tier one.

Yes. Council member Badami. Question for staff through the mayor. Um, is this something that we would be making a motion on tonight or is this something at bud at the budget hearing that we would make the movement right if we agree to it? We're just taking perspective and insight and then we're listening to what you're saying and we will take it into account as we're doing the entire budget and without it being a directive from council saint unless you want to vote to direct it. I think you'll have that opportunity when you see the preliminary budget if something is not in there. You could direct staff to evaluate it and then to come back with that change. Yes, please continue.

I would just comment that I would not be ready to to make movement on that tonight. I actually have reservations on both of those. Um I like the idea of that temporary uh better-l looking uh portaotty but a permanent one at this point knowing our budget constraints. Um, I I wouldn't be ready to move on that. And I also have some reservation on the community garden as well. Uh, I'm not sure I have all the results of the study of the toxic uh levels that were found in the ground or the viability of the center uh being uh something productive for the whole community. Council member Hudis, then Vice Mayor Risto.

Yeah, coming back um community garden. I did have a question about that, you know, a while ago and I I I do think that it belongs in the next look at the budget. Um, I actually wasn't aware of some of the information that was presented tonight about the and and maybe I missed something the last time around, but about uh not being able to proceed with um raised beds as well. So, I' I'd like to just request a briefing on that. Um, so I could understand whether that site is completely off limits, but in any case, if it is, I think we should pursue alternate sites uh for maybe a smaller community garden or something. So, I'd like to try to get up to speed on that before the next uh budget discussion.

Vice Mayor Risto,

thank you. Yeah, I would be interested in knowing um you know, first of all, I don't understand why raised beds then require um any kind of um mitigation of chemicals in the soil. So, I'd be curious to know if there's a different level if you have raised beds versus not. And if that site is just going to be cost prohibitive to do any kind of community garden, that would be helpful to know. I don't know that we'll find another site. It's always hard to find that, but if this is really going to be a hangup point on um chemical treatment, then that would be good to know. The other thing is linked to that was the Lynn Avenue pathway, and I know that from some of the public outreach that that was a pretty elaborate plan. I would prefer to see a scaledown approach. um if we can see what it would take just to get a reasonable pathway for cyclists and pedestrians to get through that um PG& rightway and then later if we want to add trees and benches and everything else. But um just from a a comfortable transportation option for human beings to separate them from cars where crosswalk literally goes right into the middle of the street and people have to go elsewhere and the pathway would be there. I would just like to know like what's the minimum we can do to get a pathway through and then we can make it nicer later. Um so I I would also like to add that to the list of things to consider.

Thank you for taking the down

and I I fully support that. I if if we're you know if we're tiering I think the the you know for me the community garden and public restroom are are top and then lin a right below that. Um I I think I I agree completely that that would be a worthwhile um uh you know conversation to see if you if you did scale it down. Yeah. How how little could it cost? Um on the public restroom, I'll just say that is I hear aside from traffic, that has to be the number one request I hear from our business owners is they want a public restroom. especially so many of the the businesses in the immediate vicinity of that area are known to have public restrooms or or get requests about public restrooms. I think that would be such I mean talk about if we want to you know one of our strategic priorities is improve vitality for our local businesses. I think the businesses would absolutely love a a public restroom. So I feel very strongly about that one. And then the community garden, you know, not to to step where I don't belong, but I I garden in a backyard that from my understanding is full of heavy metals and I just have wood. You know, maybe I'm, you know, uh uh shouldn't be, but I have the the garden beds are fully enclosed. And so then I and I moved all of the soil is from offsite and and I haven't gotten sick yet. Um, so I I I have to think, you know, and if it's not wooden beds, then it's then I would think metal beds could do it. So I I would like to I'd really like to dig into that. I think the community garden seems so doable. And I think going back to this, you know, idea that I've said a few times tonight. I think the town of Los Gatos has a responsibility to deliver on some of these key visible projects that our community is asking for and a community garden. and I think accomplishes so many of these things. You know, Council Member Hudis has referred multiple times to the fact that this is something that would be

intergenerational. It brings people together. It brings all different kinds of people together. So, I feel very very strongly about uh uh moving that one forward in this capital budget. Council member Hudis.

Yeah. Thank you. I would also reflecting back on the last conversation we had about the uh public toilets. Um, I remember a conversation talking about the smart and self-cleaning public restrooms, some of which are provided under a lease arrangement that wouldn't require brickandmortar construction. Um, and uh, you know, I I don't if if we're going to take another look at that one, I would also suggest that we don't only look at, you know, portaotties or literal brick and mortar, but we also look at um, the smart and self-cleaning uh, public restrooms that are pretty prevalent now. Um, and I don't want to go into the details of them, but I've personally used them and they're wonderful.

[laughter] [laughter] Um, okay. I had a a couple other things that I wanted to touch on. Um, one is I know there's been discussion about the Gateway Art Project and the funding for that project. Um, and and so one of my suggestions is to ensure that funding is built into the budget for next year for that project. Stop. If I can clarify, it's probably not the gateway. Why are you thinking of the foot bridge?

I'm sorry. I'm thinking of the foot bridge. Got it. My apologies. My apologies. You're You're right. Um uh yeah, the gateway. Our project looks great. Um um uh yeah, my apologies. The foot bridge. Um my understanding is that that would not be funded if the council did not take action for this next year. Um and so I would like to one of my comments is to build that into the budget to preserve funding for that. Um another ongoing issue that come up from you know a few times is that and I looked at the the budgets of other cities for this. From my understanding, the the town of Los Gatos has a very very small training and travel budget in comparison to our other neighboring cities to the point where if all five of us plus the manager and staff wanted to go to um like one annual conference, we've exhausted the entirety of the budget. And so I think that's a problem. Um I think we should be, you know, especially because we have, you know, a mix of of tenurs on the council and and we want to, you know, be continually improving. um I I don't think that that um that budget is is adequate and so I think a little bit of more funding in that um and then just another area to preserve is the existing homeless hotel program and rental assistance funding. I think that's very important and has gone a long way. Um so I I would um push for that. Uh and the uh the last couple um are I referenced this when we were talking about strategic priorities. I'd like to look into distributing the opioid settlement funding. Um so so that's one other um and then this is something that came from the complete streets and transportation commission and I think it's just worth you know considering I think I'm mostly raising this for the council's consideration as we approach this moving forward. Um the the complete streets and transportation commission recommended a smart pass

clipper card bus pilot for all students and staff at the high school. It would cost a total of $20,000 for a um six-month pilot uh which is far more economic than uh you know previously attempted bus um you know there used to be a bus and it was very very expensive. Um, the reason I think that's so persuasive is if you got even a hundred kids taking the bus who otherwise wouldn't, um, you would vastly improve uh, uh, you know, schooltime traffic and, um, uh, I know council member Hudis and I se actually, speaking for myself, when I was meeting with council member Hudis downtown several times, I was quite late um, coming from from my house um, uh, because the the traffic is so bad in the morning. And so that's something I'm really interested in. I'm also interested in in trying to find sort of creative funding for that. Um, so that's that's one other thing I I wanted to float with the council.

Yes, Council Member Dami. I would question the viability of the Clipper card um due to the increased use of ebikes. I mean, it's just been an explosion of ebikes, so I don't see kids giving those up to ride a bus. Just my two cents. Yeah, Vice Mayor Sto.

Yeah, I have mixed feelings. The people taking the bus are not the ones on the bikes. I think we're talking about people in the family spaceship that are still in a vehicle. Um I have mixed feelings about I I I read the report. I understand the thought. Um maybe if we got a 100 kids to ride the bus, I mean this is good training for the rest of their lives how to ride a bus in different cities and in college. Um but giving a clipper card to every student at the high school. I mean we have students a good portion in the Santa Cruz Mountains and up over into Santa Cruz County that would never be able to use it to go to school. Um and I guess everybody else in town would maybe have access to the bike. So, I guess it'd be interesting to look at what the viability of that would be, but um I'm I'm not seeing a big return on that. And I also think we don't have a great bust culture. Maybe this would get us there, but I don't see it.

Council member, yeah, I also think it's going to be challenging to use the VP VTA because it only has a set route that everybody has to get to. Um maybe staff can find the information for you, but five, six years ago, no, pre- pandemic, I guess, we were doing our own busing. We we put our own money in. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to see how many students we could ride. And we even tailored the routes to go wherever the students wanted to go. And we didn't get that many even with a special tailored. And this and this was even more targeting the younger kids that can't or parents may not be as comfortable with them using other modes to get to school. We couldn't get that many on it. So that data may say something about how much you're going to get high school students to ride a bus that doesn't isn't tailored to go to where their house is. I said that one last because I feel the least strongly about it for to be clear. [laughter]

So, I think this is good feedback. If there's nothing else from the council, we'll take that back as a team as we work collaboratively through the budget and um if there's a specific item that's going to be in the budget, we'll make sure we highlight that so the council can decide if there's additional direction you want to give during the final stages of the budget. You can do that. Vice Mayor Risto,

I have a question. If something's brought up just by one council member, will you still look at it? Because I mean, I don't want to take up a lot of time, but I definitely agree with the training budget issue. I mean, if if a council member can't go to more than one conference in a year, um the value of some of these conferences is really high. and the opportunity for training or speaking or connecting. Um I we have a tiny training budget and we get paid very little. So I think the opportunity to go to a conference is not asking a lot of our taxpayers. Um and I really do I think the rental assistance is huge that benefits a lot of people in our community and the hotel program. I want to make sure that those are solidly funded. So, you know, there's a balance in terms of this conversation with creating a list that, you know, one council member, every council member has an ability to say, "Here are all the things you need to do and then go do it." What we're taking is, but on the flip side, there's times that we engage in conversations and there may be something that has come to your attention that we're not necessarily aware of. And so, we wanted to get that insight to take it into the context with the directors on all the operations. And then based on your strategic priorities and how these align with those and our ability and staff and resources, what is it that we can do? And then on the back end for you to know based on this conversation what had come out, what's added in. And then if there's something, let's say for example, you know, it's the Clipper card program that that's not something we're saying is in there, you still can make the decision to say we really want you to evaluate this. And a majority of you can vote to say we want you to evaluate this and come back with the program that allows for that and then integrate into the budget whether it's the the final budget or whether the beginning half of the year we add it as a supplemental appropriation to do so.

Hey, uh the the last one that I'm I just just looking at my list that I meant to mention and this is like a this is a I think it would be a tier three on the CIP, but one of the things that I have heard from a number of of folks in town is how inefficient the North Santa Cruz main intersection is for pedestrians um right in the middle of downtown. And I I believe when I first got onto the council, I raised the idea of a pedestrian scramble there. Um, I was recently in Southern California, uh, in Manhattan Beach and a couple of those other beach towns and there are pedestrian scrambles everywhere and it hugely elevates the the walkability and we have a park right there and I think, you know, I would if nothing else I'd really I I believe there's been some like preliminary thought several years ago on this. So, I' I'd love to get an update on that. um just p you know for for my interest but I would I would love to see us you know start to think about if that could ever be something uh we do there because it's you know I see jaywalking there constantly which is not a huge deal but if we're talking about you know street safety all these things I think a a scramble could be a really good thing to both move cars and people um so that's my my last my last ad

just to clarify because you started that off with a tier three CIP which would an unprogrammed, unfunded, unscheduled project that's on a list that could be moved. I mean, I know I I'm hearing loud and clear we're not adding a bunch of new projects right now. If if the you know, if we want to put it in tier 2, even better. Um, but I'm hearing there's an interest in that and that's something that we can discuss in ter.

Yeah, Council Member Renie, since you brought that up, that intersection irritates the the living out of me also. I I that's why I always cross at parkside on on the crosswalk where I don't have to wait for a light. Then I go around the corner and I cross about where Andlay is without going anywhere near that light because it is irritating. Council member Hus.

Uh yeah, I I mean I'm thinking the same thing and maybe there's some way to direct people to a better crosswalk without uh a big a big project. Um I know about it because I and I do it. But um uh I wanted to uh reinforce support for some things in the staff report regarding uh financial management and um the the under the heading reframing the current budget structure to support performance tracking and reporting. And I just wanted to uh kind of voice my support especially for the very last sentence and um before it talks to the budget approach which is the objective is to better support budget discussions and to establish a higher level performance indicator structure that provides more timely ongoing information to town council consideration throughout the year. And so, um, I I wanted to make sure that that support was coming through at least for me.

Yes. Council, the mayor, can you um guide us to what page that is on in the staff report so I can read it? Um, I'm looking on page six. I'm sorry, page four. Thank you.

Yeah. And that's the top of the page. Page four. Okay. Is everybody good on that? Nobody asked for any flying cars. I think we're we're within uh uh you know, expectations. Um uh okay. With that, we'll close this item unless uh town manager, do you have anything else to add? I would just ask that we after this we take a break and but before we take that break decide if you want to do the next item or table it if you want to do it I can express the presentation.

Um and then you need to make sure we get public comment if you were going to accept public comment during these items. Right. Um we took I think we took public comment during item one. Um but we'd have to open it up for item two. How long is item two anticipated to take? I can do it in five minutes or I can do it in an hour. You tell me how long I have. I I think I think taking a quick break, doing a quick summary um and then adjourning. Does that sound good for everyone or are folks totally burnt? No. Okay. All right. Take a quick quick break. We'll be back in 5 minutes.

to return to discuss Rosenberg's rules of order. Um, and uh,

so Mr. Mayor, I do have 20 slides. That sounds like a lot. If you give me an estimated time that you would like me to go through, I'll go through it. And if there's any questions, we can go back and I can always provide you an incredible link to a video of Mr. Rosenberg that goes through all these details if you want to go into fine detail and if you're okay with 1960s video graphics. Uh yeah, how about uh max 10 minutes? Is is that doable?

Yes, maxed 10 minutes. Thank you. Um, I would ask that you wait for questions at the end and then we'll circle back. Uh, the purpose of Rosen Brook's rules are to simplify your parliamentary procedure. Uh, really to ensure public input and most importantly ensure efficiency in running a meeting. While we'll talk about the rules, state law and the town code do take precedence. So, if a rule conflicts with that, we must comply with the state law or the town code. Public input is important and so we should uh comment. The period should be clearly opened and closed and it helps when the chair can clearly state what the decision was actually uh taken by the council. Next slide. In establishing a quorum generally it takes three members of the council to do so. Um no motions, votes or deliberations may occur without that quorum. And if members leave and the quorum is lost, uh the meeting generally must pause or adjourn if you're not able to get that quorum. In terms of the role of the chair, in this case the mayor, you run the meeting. You direct the activities and if there's a question of procedure, parliamentary procedure, you are the ruling individual and if the council does not agree with you, they can take a vote to overturn by majority vote your determination. usually as a courtesy but not a requirement. Um you are generally speak last to avoid as you're running the meeting and you're in order not to unduly influence the debate and you may make or second motions but they're generally done sparingly. Again it's guidance not a requirement. Next slide. The flow of the agenda was slightly modified by the council. So we will announce an agenda item. Um the staff person or the individual that's presenting is the authority will present uh their report and the recommendation. The council has a chance to ask

technical or clarifying questions which is our normal process today. Um then you will ask for public comment or if it's a public hearing open the public hearing. Um in the case of non-public hearings you may also take comments at the beginning of agenda which is what we do here too. The added step is after the close of a public hearing or the close of public comment, giving the council an opportunity to ask clarifying questions and maybe of one of the speakers, but to make sure that everything you need is in [snorts] your hands before you decide to take an action. Um, you then, and this is a little bit different, rather than discussing and debating the matter without parameters, you would first invite a motion and a second. And typically if it's the staff recommendation, you would if you want to even consider that get a motion a second of the staff recommendation and then have conversations around the par parameters of that motion and then dispose of it and bring a new motion if you want to consider something else instead of just having a discussion all across the board and trying to figure out what your motion's going to be. So that is a change. Then you'd have discussion of that motion, take a vote, and then the chair would announce the results um of that action. And it could be the chair, the mayor in this case, it could be the maker of the motion, or it could be a staff person such as the clerk, the town attorney or the town manager. Next slide. Motions in general start with I move that and the motion and then the chair would ask is there a second for that so we can have discussion. Under parliamentary procedures, you are not required to have a second to be able to have the conversation. Technically, although the practice has always been here that we have a second so that there's two individuals that desire to have that conversation before you have that. It is the motion is the formal way um to put something before the body and generally no substantive discussion

should occur without that motion before. Three common motions is the main motion. I move XYZ second. Here's an action. When a motion's on the table, you could amend that motion. You could do it with a friendly motion. Would you mind revising the following? And it could be taken by the maker in the second. Or you can formally make a motion to amend the motion. You also can do a substitute motion. This is something that happened at our last meeting where there's a motion on the table. You can ask for a substitute motion. The substitute motion would take precedent. So, you'd be discussing that substitute motion and if that substitute motion passes, we're done. If it fails, you go back to the original motion. We discussed friendly amendments. Uh the multiple motion rule under Rosenberg's rules, there should be no more than three motions on the table. So, I move that we do X. Second. Substitute motion. I move that we do Y. Second. Substitute motion. I move that we do Z. Second. Now we deal with the motion to do Z. When it fails, you move back to the one that's Y. When that fails, you go back to the one that says X. And anytime if something passes, deliberation stops and we move on to the next item. The debate rules. Most motions are open to discussion and debate, but the debate focuses on the policy issues, not on the character and individuals that are bringing up that motion. And I think you've done a fantastic job which is complimentary that we are very professional how we deal with our engagements. The member must be recognized by the chair before speaking and we do that very well and the chair can limit the amount of time of discussion which we haven't typically done but you could set parameters if you want to ensure that everybody has an opportunity. In some cases in jurisdictions, you offer every council member an opportunity and you go

from one side to the other so everybody has a chance to speak and then you offer a second opportunity to make sure everybody's able to speak after having heard the first time the council spoke and you can end deliberations there and then move on to a motion. We haven't done that, but that's something you could consider. Non-debatable motions. There are certain motions that could be called that are more administrative. I move to adjourn the meeting. Yes, you can. Second and take a vote. Uh you can take a break. You can fix time to we will finish no later than 10:30 and set that time. You can move to table an item to a different meeting or just to table it indefinitely, which means we're never considering it again. Um or you can move to object what action we're actually taking at the time. These are very nuanced motions. We don't typically do them, but I raise them in the case there's ever a question and we can handle it in the course of when it comes up during a meeting. Once made and seconded, you go directly to a vote. It's not debated. So, I move to adjourn. Second. Okay. Now, you got to vote. Is there a majority that say limit? There are motions to limit debate. I could call the question uh or move the previous question, which is in essence the same thing. If no one objects, you go right to a vote. If even one of you say, "I don't agree um and you wish to continue the debate, then there's a formal motion and then twothirds of you have to take an action to take that action. It's intended to ensure that the minority are not washed out in the course of action. That's why there's a twothirds motion. If you want to just stifle the debate in at the public venue, the voting basics are what we currently already do. Uh you require simple majority votes. Members who abstain are still counted for the purposes of a quorum. There are some nuances that we don't typically run across and it could

involve when you are conflicted out and are un able to speak to or have to be rec recuse yourselves, but we can address those nuances when we get there. Generally, it takes three of you to say to make an action stick. There are some motions that are supermajorities. We talked about the limiting debate uh motions, but there are also some secondary ones. Specifically, the one to take note of is suspending the rules. So if we have a rule in place on how we do our meeting, you can suspend that rule by a supermajority if you agree it's in the best interest of the meeting and decision-m to do so. It's relatively rare, but you do have that option. Under your policy that you approved for meetings, the mayor also can offer alternative procedures from Rosenberg's rules to be able to conduct a meeting if it's appropriate. counting the votes. Typically, you need three. There are exceptions. Abstensions are not counted as yes or nos, but an abstension still means you're in the room and present for the purposes of a quorum. And there may be other local rules we pass in policy, town code, or state law that may apply. Motion to reconsider. This is something we have changed from Rosenberg's rules. You may make a motion to reconsider. You can do it at the existing meeting or you can do it um no later than the next regularly scheduled meeting when that item was originally taken up. A caveat to who can do that, the person on the prevailing side must be the one making the motion, but anybody can be the second. Sometimes it's confused that both the maker and the seconder have to be on the prevailing side. It's just getting the motion on the table has to be the side that prevailed. And the

intent of that is to ensure that we're not continuously opening up. So if I was a no and I just want to keep on fighting, I'm going to keep on I move, we reconsider. Well, no, you can't move. It has to be somebody who made the decision to say yes that says, "Yeah, I may have made a mistake. There may be new information to consider. So I move to reconsider." Courtesy and decorum. I think the council does a fantastic job. You're orderly, respectful. Uh, you must be recognized by the chairs to ensure order and personal attacks are not permitted under the rules, nor are they permitted under your policy. Interruptions are generally not allowed, but there are exceptions and these are the um kind of motions that come in to say, hey, you know, point of order, you know, you're not following the rules, so I need to call that out. that you need to interrupt or I need to have a personal privilege which typically is going to the bathroom. Do you mind if we take a break? Um it doesn't have to be this formal but I think the tenor of that request is something that you can use to interrupt in the meeting. With that I think we made 10 minutes and if you have any questions we can take them.

You're right on 10 minutes. Well done. Yes. Council member Renie I have three questions. First one, page four, um on establishing a a quorum, you said if members leave in quorum is lost, the meeting must pause or adjourn. I question whether that is a must. Clearly, we can't do items that have an action item that we need to vote on, but if there'sformational items, I believe the legally it allows us to continue the meeting. Um my understanding is that the meeting can't take place if a quorum is not present. So [snorts] my advice would be to adjourn the meeting

and and I'm not going to belabor the point because this I think this is unlikely to happen but I've watched us do this as other agencies when we lost quorums. we just switched to the information items so we could get work done and it it's more important for something like a VTA pack meeting where we barely get quorum and then people have to leave early and then we don't even get through the information items. So I I would say that it's interpreted differently different places. This has always been the case. Each each uh council and these different organizations interpret these things differently. Second question. Um, page nine. Um, under friendly amended amendments. I'm not sure I understand the last item. You said if rejected, the change may be offered as a formal amendment. What does a formal amendment mean? Council member X, would you mind revising that from 8 to 10? No, I'm not willing to make that a friendly amendment. Okay. So therefore, I move to amend said motion from to make it 8 to 10 second.

So that's sort of a substitute motion. It's just it it is, but it's really technically under the rules considered an amendment. I think the easiest way if we just decide to do substitute motion so that the entire motion is restated differently. That's probably the easiest for the public and the council to act on.

Okay, I I I get it. Um, third question. Um, on page 12, non-debatable motions. This motion to object to consideration of an item. I'm having trouble. Is this like an agenda item? And I'm going to before you even start it, I'm going to raise my hand and say we shouldn't even do this agenda item. Is that what we're saying? So, this is a little more formal than what we've typically done. So, I'm trying to do something that may be inappropriate. It's not agendaized. It's not an appropriately agendaized item. And so, I'm objecting to the conversation that we're having. And it's a it's a more formal expression of saying I object. Um, I think what we've done in the past, which could still work for the council, is I don't believe this is properly agendaized and shouldn't be a conversation or point of order, in which case we can make the determination with the help of the town attorney. and then we move on.

So we shouldn't really say motion to object to consideration of of an item because it might be confusing. It would be better to say I object to this because it does it doesn't seem to be an agenda on our agenda the our agenda item. It that's one avenue. But you also do have potentially um I object to consideration of this public hearing item because I believe we've failed to properly notice the hearing 10 days prior to the meeting. Okay. Thank you. I get it.

Um I had a quick question about um limiting public comment time under these rules. So a lot of agencies do this and and actually have the the you know the county and the city of San Jose actually have standardized um uh sort of quotas for if you have more public commenters. You know, for us, we have 30 minutes of public comment. If we have 11 public commenters, we know that's going to run over our aotted time. Um, and so this is maybe more of a question for the council is what do we think is the best practice on that? Um, because I know it's it's at it's technically at the discretion of the chair. Um, but how the county and the city of San Jose do it is they say if we're over our allotted I think they have an hour for public comment and if you have, you know, they rarely do 3 minutes because it'll go on for so long. So when there's x amount of speakers in the queue, you go down to two minutes and then, you know, you go down to one minute depending on the amount of speakers. Um, yeah, Vice Misto,

um, our actual practice is not to limit public comment to 30 minutes. is to limit public comment at the beginning of the meeting to 30 minutes and if there's a lot more speakers they go at the end of the meeting and we have run into that. I do think at the discretion of the mayor it makes sense if it's three more speakers or something then you know and this is for verbal communications right

and so all of that is for things not on the agenda um so I personally am quite comfortable you know if you get a whole group of people that want to talk about something that's not on the agenda you don't want to hijack the entire meeting by listening to three hours of comment on something we didn't agendaize. Um but it sounds like what you're suggesting and the mayor always has the discretion if you get 20 cards and you look at it you can say okay I'm limiting everybody to one minute. Um I think that has happened. Yeah.

I would also add to for the chair that at times you don't know how many speakers are waiting on Zoom. So that could add to the the length of the um duration of allowing speakers. So I would say leave it to this discretion. uh chair versus aka mayor.

Yeah. Yeah. I think the practice that we've been following um works pretty well. You know, since we don't have staff, um sometimes the first time we'll hear of an issue is during uh verbal communications. And I can think of a couple of cases where there were some big issues that were brought to the council and we wanted to hear it all. So having the mayor's discretion but sort of automatically shifting after 30 minutes to taking the rest of it afterwards I think works well for us.

Okay. If I may, Mr. Mayor, the parliamentary rules both on public comment and considering a motion before you have a deliberation are all intended to ensure the efficiency of the meeting. And so there's going to be a balance of how much public comment you want to receive. We've been very permissive which is a good practice. But if, and I'm using the extreme when we talk about policies, if there's 150 people that want to speak about a community garden, but a community garden is not on the agenda, the limitations you're placing, whether it be the amount of minutes per person or how many minutes you deal with up front before moving everything to the end agenda, is intended to one give people a voice, but to not delay the governing the information, the actions that they're taken by the governing body in consider considering the specific item and how you deal with a specific item. The reason you have a motion before deliberation and potentially limiting public comment there is the whole goal is to ensure you transact the business and don't get lost because there's no parameters that you've placed upon yourself of what action you're trying to consider. And so all of this is centered around that. And I think it's some of it's going to take some trial and error, but you never lose error on the side of being more permissive in public comment.

Yeah, I generally agree with everything that's been said. I just wanted to to get the the sense of the council. I guess the other one I wanted to ask about um and then I'll go to council member Hudis is what about on items? Um so when we have you know do do folks generally like I I don't have strong feelings about this but I think it's worth talking about while we're having this discussion. If we have 150 commenters on a specific item, do we, you know, h I've never seen the council limit the amount of time. Um, uh, do we think that would be something that's appropriate or do we philosophically think everyone should always get three minutes, people are practicing their comments at home, you know? Um, yeah. Council member Reying then I think over my 11 years we have occasionally cut it back to two minutes when there was that number of of speakers. I think you know again it's at the discretion of the mayor and the mayor may wish on a controversial land use item to let it drag out and then close the meeting when we run out of time and start it again. Right? So you could use it as a strategy to keep it at 3 minutes or even raise it to four minutes if you want or you could try to get it done right but

that's not but we have in the past cut it back to 2 minutes in some cases where there were a very lot of large number of people and if I may offer everybody's okay with that I'm I'm asking in case we get that this year

I think the other thing that's helpful people won't always listen to it. But I tell people when they're going to show up to a meeting and say, "Oh, should we get a lot of speakers?" I'm like, "What can sometimes be more effective?" Because the council will just glaze over if you send us to 1:00 a.m. before we can hear the item. Is, you know, as someone gets up to speak, maybe divide your talk up between three people, but then say, "And if you agree with me, stand up. I mean you have to be silent but you know everybody wear a certain color shirt or stand up so that we don't have to hear from 50 people but 50 people can show their point of view and sometimes people observe that and sometimes everybody wants their time and that's part of the public process but yeah I have attended meetings before I was on the council where um it was dropped to two minutes and everybody adjusted

and if I may this too is a balance um when I chaired a meeting of a governing body when we had 2,000 people in attendance and the meeting public comment took almost 11 hours. We limited the time but we allowed people to speak more than once. And so I think where the balance comes is the tenor of the item. A lot of the times we generally know the you know what kind of comments. So if you say flag policy to give you an example, you generally know you're going to end up with two different positions. And the and the scope of the type of information that's coming um it it's not unlimited. And so when you have 35 people that are wanting to speak, you generally can gauge and say what gives a reasonable basis for people to convey new information to us. and that limit to facilitate both getting the information and being able to take make a decision is what you're balancing there. So I I I think again when we cross that bridge we can kind of discuss through what would be relevant to make sure people are heard but also not delay that action that the council has to take that night.

Okay. It sounds like we're all on the same page. Just wanted to to get a gut check from folks. Council member Hudis. Yeah. And I'm going through this looking for departures from what we've been doing. Um, on page three, uh, after action, the chair should clearly state what decision was made. Is it okay just to say the motion passes 3 to two or do you need to read back the motion?

I there's also a provision that if you just made the motion and you voted, then it's pretty clear you made it. But if you made the motion, had a lot of debate, you may want to restate what a action did occur. And I think again there's a balance and it it may not necessarily need to be the mayor. It may also be staff just to make clear that we were all on the same page of what action occurred.

Okay. I had a couple others. Um again I'm looking at you know this applying to our commissions. I'm assuming we're going to do some training for our commissions as well. Um we are. That's why we partly left this as chair. And what we're probably going to do is um either take this recording where we discussed it and send it out to the commissions or do individualized training. The preference would be send them the link so they can watch it instead of doing nine or 10 different presentations at commissions.

Right. So on page um five again I think this is a little bit different. And I think the council generally does this, but I have noticed in a number of the commissions uh where the chair is leading the um debate. And so that uh bullet point, the chair should generally speak last to avoid influencing the debate. I think that one when we do the training, we might want to emphasize that with our commissions.

I think that's important. And here's the reason why. The chair is the one that's the traffic cop of the meeting. And so if you're engaged in debate from the beginning through the whole like an equal partner as opposed to being a traffic cop, you're missing the opportunity to guide to a quicker decision, but you still have the opportunity to speak if you're the traffic cop being able to provide your input at the appropriate time. But the goal that you're doing as the chair is to try to understand what are we missing to get to a decision and not let the conversation go on and on. So I think for a commission I think that's especially important. Okay. And then um just the last one I have is on page 12. Uh motion to table. Does table mean the same thing as to continue? Yes. Okay. because we've generally used the term continue items here.

I I think we don't have to prescribe ourselves to the letter. Gen generally it's an opportunity to move something to a future meeting. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Other questions or comments? Um we do have one hand raised on Zoom. Um, so we'll go to our one uh public commenter. Um, I'll open up public comment. We'll go to Yamamoto. Hello there. How is everybody? Can you hear me? Yes, we can.

Okay. Just checking. Okay. So on the debate rules, um, what is the time limit that each of you as chairpeople get to talk? [laughter] Cuz sometimes it seems like a few of you are long- winded and it takes you 15 to 20 minutes to get to the point. So, is there a timeline of it on that one? And then the other one is I if there is a hostile or uh you kind of skipped over the slide. If there is a hostile person or a person that's personally attacking some one of you, is there a way of dealing with that? Is there strict guidelines on that? I'm just kind of curious. Thank you.

Thank you for the questions. Um, looks like the town attorney has input probably on the second one. Um, if the council is is okay. Um, and then with regard to the first question, there's no time limit on council discussion. Um and then with regard to disturbances, um there was a recent amendment to the government code and that provides that if there's a disturbance, which is defined to mean something that's impeding the the course of the meeting, um the speaker will receive one warning and then if the speaker um enga continues to engage in the disturbance after having received the warning, the speaker will be removed.

Council member Hudis. So, is that contained in our current uh agenda policy or do we need a revision? Um, no. That is referenced in the town's agenda policy and it's also um in the government code and so it applies. Town manager

and and if I may add, there is no explicit time limitation for council members. However, you can choose to impose time limits for individual speakers on the council if you mutually agree. And again, under the rules, technically the mayor can establish limiting debate by each council member to five minutes and give five minutes to each one. So you can do that again on balance. It's intended to get to an a decision and not unnecessarily delay it, but you don't want to forstall the conversation and deliberation and the debate that's meaningful in informing that decision. Yes, council member.

You know, I'd just comment on that. There have there are other councils in our county that have had to do that and that's really when council members are a problem. I would, you know, say that we should ourselves try to police ourselves so we don't have to go to something as dra draconian as cutting off council members. So, um I I would just ask my fellow council members to try to not overdo it so we don't have to get to that point. Okay. And we have no other public commenters. I'll close public comment. Um uh any other questions, comments on this policy? All right. We did in less than a half hour, which is not bad. Um uh okay. Um with that, there's nothing else, so this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.