City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Let's call to order the council meeting of September 15th, 2026 at 7.01 PM. The city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. Sunnyvale prides itself on the rich diversity of our residents. We are committed to creating a culture of belonging where members of a diverse community feel included, safe, and respected. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means that council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item being considered by council for consent calendar and public hearing items. Comments during public comment or non-agenda items must be limited matters within council's authority generally referred to as council's subject matter jurisdiction if a speaker's comments are not related to an agenda item the presiding officer will rule that speaker out of order a speaker will not be ruled out out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech location and online meeting details are available on the council agenda scan the qr code on the screen or click the language access and translation link on the council agenda to read and listen along in more than 60 different languages use the show captions button to view captions on zoom comments on matters not on the engine agenda must be submitted prior to the time i call for public comment on non-agenda items comments on agenda items must be submitted prior to the time i close the public hearing on that agenda item Speakers are requested to keep their comments to the time period set for that specific item and time limits will be strictly enforced. Guidelines are posted on the city's website and on the council meeting agenda. First, please stand if you are able and join me in a salute to the flag.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation,

liberty and justice for all.

City Clerk, may we please have roll call? Mayor Klein. Present. Vice Mayor Mellinger. Present. Council Member Cisneros.

Present.

Council Member Srinivasan.

Present.

Council Member Sell.

Present.

Council Member Chang.

Present.

Council Member Lay.

Present.

Seven present. Thank you. We now have several special orders of the day. Let me come up to the lectern. Before we begin tonight's meeting, we have several special recognitions. First, we will take a moment to celebrate Hispanic and Latino communities' culture and heritage. We have a special guest with us present in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, which actually began today. Joining us tonight is Alex Ontiveros, Come forward, Alex. He's founder and CEO of the Silicon Valley Latino Inc. and the Silicon Valley Agency. I would also like to invite Council Member Alyssa Cisneros to come to the lectern. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced Hispanic Heritage Week to include the dates of September 15th and September 16th. This was specifically designed to celebrate Hispanic Americans and the anniversaries of independence for our Central American neighbors of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, as well as Mexico's independence on September 16th. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan expanded the week to a 30-day period, beginning September 15 and ending on October 15. This year's theme is Unidos Somos Más, Together We Are More. and celebrates family, resilience, creativity, faith, and service. It honors the diverse stories and strengthens our nation and encourage investing in the future. Alex, would you like to say a few words?

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

First and foremost, Mayor Klein and City Council, thank you very much for this proclamation. It's very special to us in the Latino community. I do have some remarks that I prepped, but I'll keep it short. I'm just going to highlight what really matters and what this reflects. Recognition matters, right? Recognition of contributions matter. Recognition of impact matters. And stories matter. The right stories matter. Stories that inspire. And having platforms and acknowledgements that recognize the Latino community's impact and contributions truly matter. I'm going to share a little bit about an event that we held many years ago. I think it was May of 2017. It was a Latino leaders fireside chat. And the speaker was just incredible and truly inspiring individual, inspiring individual. And he stayed and met and greeted everyone that was there. And the very last person that met with him was a high school teenager and his older brother. His older brother brought him to this event. And he brought him because he was struggling earlier in the week. And once he came up to myself and the speaker, he shared with us that he had been contemplating suicide earlier in that week. And hearing about this keynote speaker that we had there truly inspired him, inspired him enough that it shifted what he was contemplating. And it was that kind of incident, it's that kind of situation that a lot of times we don't know what our work really does and the impact that it can have on individuals. But that was one of the times where I felt that the work that we do also matters in that regard. And again, for this, I thank you. Council members, I thank you. Muchas gracias.

Thank you. Council member Susana.

Yes. thank you both uh for your remarks and thank you everyone for being here and being engaged in your community and i'm really proud to be standing right here and for the last five-ish years as the first latina ever elected to the sunnyvale city council i'm the second hispanic person ever elected first was ron gonzalez about 25 years ago and what i hope and what this city is working toward is that we don't need to wait another 20 years to have the third I just wanna share, we're talking about stories and talking about community and how we all get here. And I wanna mention how diverse this community is. how many different roads people take to get here or where they are or contribute in the way that they end up doing so. But I just want to share my family's story. So we started out in Texas working on ranches and eventually came out here to the Valley of Heart's Delight because those jobs were a lot easier and there was also a lot of opportunities for construction and upward mobility and middle class attainment. And that's exactly what my family did. all 50 or 60 of them came over together at the same time. And I'm really proud that my grandfather started a drywall business that was quite successful, Cisneros Drywall. And my dad, when I was four years old he started working at Hewlett Packard but as a janitor he didn't know what he wanted to do hadn't gone to college and over a period of 32 years he went from being a janitor to being a global client manager managing some of their largest portfolios yeah He worked real hard, but the fact is coming to the Valley of Hearts Delight, which became the Silicon Valley at the time that he was developing his career, companies really believed in the people who worked for them and they paid for him to go to college. At the same time, he was having more kids and working full time, but that opportunity was available and he took great advantage of it because that was available. was instilled in me, you go to college and you go and do something. And I'm really proud to be the first of something in the city that I grew up in. And it's really an honor to carry not just my story, but all of the other stories that had to happen to lead to me being here. And I like to think about what we can do to contribute and change other people's stories for the better so that there are people down the line in their generations that have an exponentially more incredible life and more opportunities. This is a great area to enjoy Hispanic Heritage Month by eating some really delicious food. I don't know if I need to tell you that, but there are many cultural events going on and just taking some time to learn about all of the ways that people have built upon each other. in their families and their communities in pure belief in that we can do it even when the evidence isn't necessarily there at the moment you create those opportunities and you seize on them. So thank you all for being here tonight. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. And I want to thank just everyone who has contributed and brought this moment to fruition. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member, and thank you, Alex, for being here, for sharing your stories. On behalf of the Sunnyvale City Council, I thank Alex and his entire team for the great work that they're doing in our community, and it is my great pleasure to proclaim September 15th through October 15th as Hispanic Heritage Month. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you. For our second recognition of the night, I invite Chief Master Sergeant Sally Ford to come forward. She's the Command Chief of the 129th Rescue Wing. Tonight, we honor and remember our service members and civilians who never returned home from war. Each year, the third Friday of September is designated as Prisoner of War Missing in Action Day. every American still missing and unaccounted for from the past conflicts is entitled to one certainty, that they will never be forgotten. Throughout American history, many men and women have bravely and selflessly served our nation and protected and defended our nation. Some of those who answered the call to service were captured in conflict and imprisoned by our enemies. We recognize them for their courage and determination that they showed in face of unspeakable hardships. We also honor those who did not return, especially remembering the sacrifices of their families who must face each day without knowing the fate of their loved ones. Chief Master Sergeant, would you like to say a few words?

Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Good evening, everyone. Major Klein, council members, thank you very much for taking the time to recognize this category of service member. I myself was not a POW, I was asked earlier, but I'm a humble representative of those that were and graciously accepting this proclamation on their behalf. I cannot stress the importance of remembering all people who served and especially served in that way and the sacrifices they made. I had an uncle who served two tours in Vietnam and he would come home and he would tell these stories again and again and again of those he served with. And when we asked him, like, why do you keep telling the same stories over and over? And he said, it's so no one will forget them. And we don't want to do that. Part of the mission of our wing at the 129th Rescue Wing, we are a combat search and rescue wing. We're credited with saving 1,190 lives. And part of our mission is so that people do not become prisoners of force. In fact, Air Force Rescue had a hand in retrieving the pilots shot down over Iran in this recent conflict. The other aspects of our mission include civil search and rescue. We are known for long range over water search and rescue. We can go where the Coast Guard can't and you can tell them I said that because we have the ability to aerial refuel. We also do aerial firefighting and counter drug operations in the state. The motto of our wing is these things we do that others may live. And we take that very seriously. I have just one, I didn't prepare comments. This is just me speaking. But I had one quote that I wanted to read you because it's my personal motivation for serving. It's up on my wall in my office. I'm reading it because I didn't want to leave a word out. And the words are attributed to Albert Einstein actually. Says 100 times every day, I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. So thank you, Mayor, once again for taking the time to recognize.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chief Master Sergeant. The city will raise the POW MIA flag this Friday morning, September 18th. We also ask everyone to pause for a moment that day to give thanks to those that have been returned and renew our pledge to those who are still missing and to their families. You are not forgotten. On behalf of the City of Sunnyvale, it is my great pleasure to proclaim September 18th as POW MIA Recognition Day in the City of Sunnyvale. Thank you, Master Sergeant. Thank you for what the 129th continues to do. Thank you. And for our last recognition, I invite one of our own, Vice Mayor Richard Mellinger, to join me here at the lectern. This year marks the 57th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. In 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in New York City's Greenwich Village, the LGBTQ plus community came together to take a strong stand against the public harassment and discrimination spurring the LGBTQ plus rights movement. In September, we celebrate Bisexual Plus Awareness Week, known as Bi Week. Bisexual Plus Awareness Week seeks to increase cultural awareness and acceptance of the bi plus, bisexual, pansexual, fluid, no label, queer, et cetera community. This bi plus community represents more than half of the LGBTQ plus community, making them the largest single group. Bi Week highlights their struggles and triumphs because even as great articles and great strides have been made on the wider LGBTQ plus acceptance, there are still deep prejudices against people who are bisexual, pansexual, fluid, or generally attracted to more than one gender? Vice Mayor, would you like to say a few words?

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. As you know, me keeping things to a few words is always a challenge, but I will try. Hello. My name is Richard Mellinger, and I have the honor to be the vice mayor of the city of Sunnyvale and the council member for District five. And I am also a bisexual. So by visibility day by Awareness Week is really, really important because when you look at the history of the LGBTQ movement by voices have often been erased. They've often been marginalized. They've often been silenced. This despite the fact that the by plus community is the largest portion, the largest single population category of any of the letters in the. right in the alphabet soup of our community, right? And it's important to understand that bi people have always been a part of the broader LGBTQ plus movement. People like Brenda Howard, called the mother of pride, who literally helped to get the institution of pride that we celebrate now off the ground. There are so many others who have played such an important role in moving the entire community forward, in fighting for the rights of everyone in this country to have the freedom to love who they love, to be with who they want to be with, even if the categories aren't so clean, even if it's not quite so clear cut. And so now I would like to invite up Greg Aronica to say a few words. Greg is a former radio person, a media personality, journalist, queer advocate, and event coordinator who's been helping to organize and host events for our community for the past 20 years. Greg, I'd like to invite you up to say a few words.

Awesome. Thank you very much. uh wow bisexual awareness week uh when i was a young queer kid i never would have thought such a thing was possible i was i didn't even come out until much later in life but um i did prepare a couple of words here and yes i'll also try to keep this brief but first i have to put on my bifocals

So I don't speak for all bisexuals because there's so many of them and I'm by myself up here.

But my definition of bisexuality is very simple. I am attracted to those who are the same gender as me and to those who are not the same gender as me. To Quote the Bisexual Manifesto is published as part of the Anything That Moves magazine from 1990 in San Francisco. My identity is not binary. It is not duogamous. And I do not have two sides. I don't have to be involved with multiple genders to find myself fulfilled. I just kind of like who I like, and that is who I am. It breaks the boundaries of monosexuality. Okay, so for those who are not in the know, monosexuals are what we in the multisexual community call people who are gay, straight, or lesbian. We consider ourselves to be multisexual because we have a wide range of attractions. So the most recent Gallup poll, they sort of alluded to it, Vice Mayor and the Mayor alluded to it, indicates that roughly 9% of the overall population is LGBTQ+. And while gays and lesbians make up roughly 17 and 16% of that respectively, the total number of people who identify as bisexual is a whopping 58% of the LGBTQ plus population. And that's just the people who are out. There is an entire population of queer people who don't feel comfortable coming out. Just as there is a large number of people who like to say, well, you know, I don't want to put a label on it. And there's an argument to be made that there are even more of us than research suggests. We are a whole fluid identity, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows. I mean, well, there's a lot of rainbows, but I digress. The Bisexual Resource Center states that 61% of bisexual women experience some form of intimate partner violence. For bi men, it's 37%. For reference, the number of straight women who experience the same is around 35%, and straight men, it's about 29%. Bisexuals are at a higher risk of experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace and in public. They're at a higher risk of substance abuse, poverty, and even public mockery for coming out. This contributes to the statistic that only 12% of bisexual men are even comfortable coming out publicly or to friends and family. But being out is more than just the label. The reason I identify so openly as a bisexual is because, you know, I'm queer and I'm peacocking and that's half the fun of it. And I love annoying queerphobes, but also because I openly identify the way that I do to signal to others that being out is okay. Being true to yourself is a wonderful and liberating thing. And now that kid that's questioning their identity might actually feel a little bit more comfortable being themselves. And that guy that waited 33 years to come out despite all of the boyfriends and girlfriends he's had over his lifetime and the people of other identities that he found super attractive, suddenly he found his courage to openly identify how he's always felt. That's not based on a personal experience, by the way. It is an identity, but it is also an organizing tool. The very first Pride marches were organized by Brenda Howard as we spoke. But did you actually know that Bisexual Awareness Month, the entire reason why we celebrate it in September, it's because Freddie Mercury's birthday is in September. That is a true factoid, by the way. Freddie Mercury's birthday is September 5th, and so we celebrate Bisexual Awareness Month in the month of September. So if you were following along and doing some of the math, listen, I'm queer and I'm terrible at math, but let's just go along with it. 7% of the US population is bisexual. That's 24 million Americans. That's more than total the population of Los Angeles, San Diego, and the entire Metro Bay Area combined. 24 million is roughly the same as the number of millionaires in the United States, which is probably why rich people are so scared of us, FYI. And because we are such a large cohort of the LGBTQ plus community, it is incumbent upon us to raise our voices for other marginalized identities. Raise our voices to our trans brothers and sisters and siblings who've had their rights stripped away by governments that criminalize our very existence. To the non-white LGBTQ plus folks around the world that are suffering under the boots of fascism and genocide. All queer people, not just the 24 million bisexuals, deserve to live with dignity, respect, and comfort, not to be legislated away by queerphobic politicians or tracked by a flock of security cameras on every corner. I do not speak for all bisexuals, but I do hope that by raising my voice, I can encourage others to accept themselves for who they are. Adopt the label. Join us in the continued fight for queer liberation. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing your stories. To affirm our statement of values, the City of Sunnyvale is committed to respecting, valuing, and affirming all members of our community, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Today and every day, we celebrate the LGBTQ plus community, which includes many of our residents, business owners, city employees, and students. It is my great pleasure to proclaim September 16 through September 23 2026 as bisexual awareness week in the city of sunnyvale Thank you, thank you very much, thank you. Next up is oral comment on non-agenda items. This is now the public's opportunity to address council on topics not listed on our agenda this evening. This section is limited to 15 minutes and may be extended or continued after public hearings and general business section of our meeting. Individuals may only speak once during public comment on non-agenda items. This council meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the council can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited matters within council's authority, generally referred to as council subject matter jurisdiction. If a speaker's comments are outside of council subject matter jurisdiction, the presiding officer will rule that speaker out of order. This allows council to conduct its business in a reasonably efficient manner and protects the rights of other speakers. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk, Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have two minutes to speak. Before I get to the public, Council Member Srini Basin has several announcements.

Thank you, Mayor. 2026 Sunnyvale State of the City. Celebrate Sunnyvale with us. We invite you to our annual State of the City event this Saturday, September 19th. The event is free and open to all members of the public and will be from 8.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. at City Hall here. It will include an opening reception, the mayor's state of the city address, board and commission recognition, and community awards. For information, visit sunnyvale.ca.gov and search state of the city. We hope you can join us in recognizing all the wonderful people and happenings in the city of Sunnyvale. The next announcement is recruitment for advisory committee on accessibility and human relations committee. The City of Sunnyvale is currently seeking new members for Advisory Committee on Accessibility and Human Relations Committee. Applications to serve on these committees are accepted on a continuous basis. Applications received after the vacancies have been filled will be considered for future openings. For more information and to apply, visit sunnyvale.ca.gov and search advisory committees or call Office of Equity, Access and Inclusion at 408-730-7950. Next is volunteer opportunities with Ants on Arts. The 41st annual Ants on the Arts Festival is a free, long-standing tradition celebrating our city's diversity through art from all around the world. the event is on saturday october 17th from 10 am to 3 pm at sunnyvale's community center we are seeking energetic volunteers to help our art workshop leaders by organizing prepping restocking and cleanup supplies help kids with fun art projects provide general customer service Full day and half day volunteer shifts are available. For more information or to volunteer, visit sunnyvale.ca.gov and search Ants on Arts or email antsonthearts at sunnyvale.ca.gov. Next is Active Aging Week. The Sunnyvale Senior Center will celebrate Active Aging Week from October 5 through October 9. This national campaign celebrates the positive aspects of aging and encourages older adults to remain healthy, active, and connected. The highlight of the week will be the Free Senior Resource Fair on Wednesday, October 7th from 9 AM to noon at the Sunnyvale Senior Center. The fair will connect older adults and caregivers with community organizations, service providers, and valuable programs and resources. The senior center will also offer free fitness classes, dancing, educational presentation, music, karaoke, and other activities throughout the week. No registration is required. For complete schedule, visit the city's website or stop by the Senior Center or call 408-730-7360. Those are my announcements. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. I will now be reading off names for the people in the room so the first person please come to the lectern and the second person be waiting nearby so we can um speed up transition between the people first up is charlene l followed by mike c

Hi, I'm Charlene Liu. The city is making progress towards active transportation, but there are some problems that I'd like to bring up. I also sent Council an email about this last week, so please consult the email for more details. The first issue is with the Safe Routes to School program. I attended all three Safe Routes to School working group meetings in August, and I see that the Safe Routes to School program is still pretty inactive. There was no communication to schools and parents about these meetings. As a result, the meetings were very poorly attended. Almost nobody attended. The city is offering education, but only to two out of 17 schools. There is very little city support for encouragement activities. Enforcement is focused on reprimanding cyclists and pedestrians instead of drivers. Engineering staff was absent from the meetings. Evaluation in the form of traffic tallies is still not done right, so we won't be able to track progress. The second issue I want to talk about is the traffic calming program. There are long delays in the program just to get a petition form from the city to collect signatures. It takes six months to two years is what I'm observing now. In addition, stage one traffic calming is slow. The longest one is taking over nine years from the time of the request to get completed and there are a few others that are in the pipeline that have been years in the pipeline. The revamping of the program in 2024 didn't fix the bulk of the barriers of the program. Signature collection remains a huge barrier. From this pie chart from a staff presentation, we learned that 59% of the requesters do not turn in a petition. Signature collection takes too long. Many people aren't home and they don't open the door. traffic thresholds are too high from the same staff presentation. We learned that 60% of requests don't meet traffic thresholds. So I hope we can improve the program because this is a very important program. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Mike C, followed by Rosemary.

Well, I'm here to just say thank you to the council for your service. I know you don't do it for the money. You do it for the love of Sunnyvale. And I want to especially thank the people that I know here. Mayor Klein, I want to thank you for representing all Sunnyvale residents. And you've done a fine job of that. I want to thank Linda Sell, who is our district representative, particularly with regard to Las Palmas and all of her sage advice helping us. don't think he's here david kessing i was at the parks and rec meeting last week and he was extremely efficient and very gracious in allowing me to ask a question which he then followed up quite vigorously more than i expected so i really i think he did a great job and last but not least tim kirby who has been our city manager for I don't know how long, but he's been doing a great job. He's been responsive. He's been transparent. He explained to me today about the city structure, how things get done, who's in charge of what, and he's a great guy. And Aaron Burt, I was introduced to him as well. He didn't say too much, but I think he'll do a great job. So thank you all.

Thank you. Next up is Rosemary, followed by Vicki H.

Hello, Mayor Klein. It's first time speaking and council members. My husband and I have lived here in beautiful Sunnyvale since 1995. And a friend of mine told me back then, oh, you're going to love Sunnyvale because there's a fabulous Las Palmas Park. And so it is. And we've lived here since 1995, and we're lucky to say that we open up the front door, walk up the street, and we can be right there seeing what's ahead, the beautiful Sunnyvale Park, Las Palmas Park. when you go up there you know your mind might be have a lot of things you know you could be just going up for a nice stroll or you could have some problems on your mind but the idea is you go through this pathway and you can see the visage of what's ahead now if there's a big fence there that's proposed that is just going to totally i don't know i don't know what's going to do to my mind but why spoil what's already there it's an open the Valley of Hearts delight that's what it is that's where we all live and the Valley of Hearts delight is the last Palmer's Park one of one of the ones that is there and there are many others and um What else do I want to say? Back in England, you know, they'd have a phrase about cricket. When things were not right, if you made a statement and it wasn't right, they would say, well, it's just not cricket. So we're 30 seconds in. So just want to say, we love Las Palmas Park. Please do not build ugly fences around it. We don't need that. And we don't need those big sports lights. We need some nice restrooms. That's it. Please keep our beautiful park. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Vicky H followed by Steve. Sorry. Yes, Steve B.

Mayor and council members, thank you for listening to me. You know, as I sat here tonight thinking about what I wanted to say, it occurred to me that Las Palmas Park is Sunnyvale's New York Central City Park and Golden Gate Park for San Francisco, so it's our little bit of green heaven. I'd like to see us keep it green. There's going to be so much more affordable living that's being built right across the way here, across Saratoga-Sunnyvale, and those people are going to need green open spaces. So I do beg you to consider to keep Las Palmas fence-free and light-free for the environment. I've heard a lot about inclusion tonight and diversity. Keeping, putting a fence up will work against that. If that's what you're all, I'm hearing over and over and over again tonight is inclusion and diversity. A fence is going to exclude people. Right now it is being used as a community park by so many different people at the same time and fencing it in is gonna be limiting. So that's my two cents. I'd like other people to be able to bring their five-year-olds to the park to celebrate their birthday like I did for my boys and my grandchildren. So thank you for listening to me.

Thank you. Next up is Steve B., followed by Yohan M.

good evening my name is steve belton and i'm i've been a long-term resident of sunnyvale i'm also a retired physician and tonight i'd like to address the las palmas park renovation from a public health perspective and specifically the positive effects of open green space on our health I wanted to see what the experts had to say, and so I looked at the professional and academic literature in the urban planning field. It turns out that it's full of studies and articles that speak about open green spaces in urban settings. So what specifically does the literature show? Well, it uniformly shows better mental health, better physical health, and better community health. And the literature overwhelmingly supports open green spaces, a variety of trees, and the multi-generational use of these spaces. The literature also shows that fixed sports facilities limit the benefits. In the interest of time, I'm going to give details from studies from Harvard, Oregon Health Sciences, and from Texas A&M. And these are the references, these three articles in this bibliography I put together. You can refer back to them if you desire. Here are some quotes from these studies from Harvard. Urban green space is an important multifaceted influence on the health of urban populations with respect to mental, physical, social, and other benefits. And because my time is running out, I'm going to skip ahead. I'd remind all of us that community parks like Las Palmas Park should look like this and this and that this belongs over at a regional park like Bayman's. So we join you in the desire for a beautiful future and a hope for Sunnyvale. Thank you all for your service.

Next up is Yohan M followed by Alan W.

Good evening. My name is Jehon Matthew. Thank you for this opportunity to share. I grew up on the other side of Sunnyvale, so I've been coming to Las Palmas Park for over 35 years. We would actually drive across town passing multiple parks along the way just to get to Las Palmas because it was amazing. I grew up playing there. I still remember that giant wooden pirate ship. I don't know if any of you remember that. I think I still have splinters in my hands from those wooden beams. But it was just me, my friends, and our imagination. No coaches, no instructions, no adults telling us what game to play. We would just go outside and play. Fast forward 30 plus years, we're now raising our four kids in that same neighborhood. And Las Palmas is our park. And one of my favorite things to do is to tell my kids simply just go outside and play. My generation of parents is falling prey to the lie that if we over program our kids with defined activities every hour of the day, they will be successful. And I strongly disagree. When I look at Las Palmas, I see the opposite of this lie. Las Palmas Park is one of those increasingly rare places. It's a safe, open lighthouse of a space in our community where we can tell our children, just go outside and play. Have fun, walk into a big open field and you decide what happens next. Maybe it's soccer, maybe it's tag, maybe it's cricket, maybe tomorrow four kids are gonna invent a game that none of us have ever heard of. We have something great in Las Palmas Park, and right now we're being given the gift of this moment to pause here and reflect on how truly great that park is before we trade it away for something structured, programmed, and fixed. Someday we may look back and realize that what made Las Palmas Park special was not what we built there, but it's what we left open. So please leave room for our kids and the next generation of kids to just go outside and play at Las Palmas Park. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Alan W followed by Zachary K.

Hi there, you've heard a lot about Las Palmas Park over the last few weeks and months and everything. I just wonder how many council members really appreciate the effort that the Sunnyvale residents have actually made to try to keep the park the way it is now. It's a huge effort, and I hope you appreciate all that effort that they put together. I look at some of your faces, and some of your faces are looking down when people are talking about the park, when really it's very important to everybody that's in this room that you give the park the 100% attention that it really deserves. We all love the park. Nobody wants to change. But we understand that things need to be improved. There's no doubt about that. So the bottom line for me is that I hope that you all appreciate the effort that the residents of Sunnyvale are making to keep this park a greenbelt. It really is nice. The other thing I'd like to say is that remember when you make the decision and you vote on this, you're going to go down in history. You're either going to go down in history that you change the park or not the best, or that you helped keep the park in the positive way that the residents want to have it. It's very important that you listen to the residents because they are the ones that are going to tell you what they really want. And I would think that you people would recognize that. It's really important because the people back here put you in that position to look after them. And their word should carry 100% against no change. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Zachary K followed by Caleb K.

most of my life i remember the sales tax rate in sunnyville is eight and a quarter percent and then something changed following multiple sales tax rates to bump cover on to bump bumps to cover unmet needs the rate presently sits at nine point seven five percent come this november voters are requested to raise it once more with the public transit revenue measure this time it is half a percent taking the total rate to 10.25 percent Or to put it differently, $1.03 in tax for every $10 you spend. Caltrain is having revenue problems, supposedly from reduced ridership. But as we heard from VTA here, only 10.38% of the new revenue, if passed, goes towards them. They were trying to figure out what to do with the rest. At some point, voters may decide they've had enough. Is this the one? If it is not this one, maybe it is the next. VTA mentioned here about getting new light rail trains with batteries on board so they could take down the overhead lines in downtown San Jose as one of the ideas. Voters get some say to that urgency this November. Is 10.25% sales tax all right with you?

Thank you. And my last speaker card is Kayla McKay.

Hello. Hello, council members. My name is Caleb Kim and I'm a student in an organization called Sunnyvale Youth Public Policy Institute, an organization working with former mayor, former vice mayor, Nancy Smith, and current vice mayor, Linda Sell, on a project to raise awareness about homelessness and basically trying to advocate for it. I'm reaching out because of your extensive work in homelessness services, outreach, supportive housing, and community response through San Francisco. I would be grateful for the opportunity to interview you or some of your... Oh, sorry, I think. Basically, what we want to bring to your attention was this bill called AB 1924. It's already passed through the legislative processes in the California Assembly. but we still need gavin newsom to sign it for it to become a law basically it's based on preventative measures to prevent people from losing their homes so what we really want you guys to do is to have an official letter sent from the city of sunnyvale with an official position of support for ab9024 so that we can support everyone's right to housing um thank you very much

Thank you.

Real quick.

Vice Mayor.

I would like to note that in two weeks we will be having our council hearing on the strategy. I'm going to blank on the name, but essentially our homelessness strategy and Mr. Kirby can give the full title if he would like. And I would encourage anyone who's interested in the topic of addressing homelessness to attend or listen to that meeting. Thank you.

Thank you. And that's our next meeting on September 29th. That was my last speaker card in the room. City Clerk, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on? Sorry. Council Member Zell?

Yeah, I just wanted to thank you for coming out and speaking in support of that bill. And also, I'm not Vice Mayor, it's Vice Mayor Millinger, Council Member, but thank you so much for coming out and we'll look at that bill very seriously. Thank you.

thank you that was my last speaker card in the room because of the nature of remote communication speakers who are ruled out of order will not be given another chance to speak on this item therefore speakers are warned to limit their comments to subject matters that fall within city council's authority to decide or take action city clerk do you have any remote participants wishing to speak on public comment on non-agent items

yes mayor first up is an individual calling in with a phone number ending in 784 followed by kdw the individual calling in with a phone number ending in 784 you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the city council

uh hi i think you were referring to me i'm kevin jackson i wanted to pull item 1e from the consent calendar but not speak at public comments we'll we'll come back to consent in just a few minutes kevin this is still not an agenda okay thank you next up is katie w followed by henry s katie you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the city council

Katie, you should see it. There we go.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Sorry. Hi, I'm Katie White. I live in the Las Palmas neighborhood and I'm so thankful for you giving me this time. I've never done anything like this before. I'm a mom of two kids. One's two and a half, one is five. And I just wanted to share a really personal story about Las Palmas Park because it is so important to our family and to me. um it really builds on my neighbors uh comments public comments earlier about public health and how important open space is i had my first baby during the height of the pandemic and i was immediately thrust into postpartum depression i don't know if anyone's experienced that in the room but it is quite a black hole. Blast Promise really kept me sane. I walked my baby through that park in that open space, seeing all the people playing and gathering and having birthday parties. And it really just was an anchor for me in a very tough time and a happy time, right? I love my baby, but it was a hard mental health time for me. And having that open, wide open space to walk through and just sit on the benches and see all the people and all my neighbors in my community really grounded me. So I just urge you to really think about how important that type of open space is in such a densely populated area as the Bay Area. It's just an amazing opportunity that we have and I echo my neighbor who spoke so eloquently about giving kids the open space to play. We need to stop and think about what would be the best place here. And I do strongly believe that the diversity and all of the activities that Sunnyvale has to offer is a strength. But there are other places where organized sports and sports fields and professional sports fields with big, big fences are more appropriate. And that would definitely be the Baylands area. And I would support that. So thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Next up is Henry S. Henry, you've been unmuted and you have two minutes to address the city council.

Good evening mayor and council members tonight. We heard a lot about diversity and inclusion. So let's apply those principles when the proclamations end and the city starts allocating actual public assets. When we keep hearing don't fence people in at Las Palmas park, that's a slogan, not a recreation policy. During the spring 2025 Las Palmas outreach, neighborhood advocates objected to, for example, pickleball because of excessive noise. Now we're hearing support for free pickleball at the tennis center through public comments at the Parks Commission meeting last week on September 9th and previous public comments at various council meetings. So now free pickleball at the tennis center is acceptable behind fences and under lights. Pickleball didn't get quieter, but the location certainly changed. Last week, we also heard the tennis center was being criticized by another Las Palmas resident because tennis supposedly became pay-to-play. If loss of free tennis is an equity problem, then explain how free public tennis capacity somewhere else and converting it to pickleball solves that problem, because free tennis is public access too, and this isn't a dying or an exclusionary sport. The 2026 U.S. Tennis Participation Report estimates 27.3 million players nationwide, and Hispanic and Latino players represent that portion at 19%, Black and African American players at 14%, and Asian and Pacific Islander players at 11%. Hispanic participation has grown approximately 13.5% annually since 2020, Black participation in approximately 12%. And in Northern California alone, there are 1.6, approximately 1.6 million tennis players with a 10.9 participation rate growth. So before council accepts another round of organized repetition as evidence of community consensus, measure the thing, measure unmet demand, displace users, free access, noise, regional use, and distinguish repeated advocacy from representative participation. Equity cannot mean protecting one constituency from fences and lights and noise while transferring the facilities or the impacts to somebody else. Thank you.

Mayor, that was the final remote public speaker for non-agenda items.

Okay. I'll go ahead and close public comment on non-agenda items. Next up is our consent calendar. Sure. Vice Mayor. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.

Those came in for Las Palmas Park, I would ask you to please stay in the room for the next 60 seconds or so. Mr. City Manager, could you provide an update on where we are with the Las Palmas Park outreach and what the current timeline is?

Yeah, actually, I'll be brief. I think the members of the public know because they're subscribed to the project site, but we are initiating the outreach shortly and emails have gone out describing how that's going to work between focus groups and community meetings. So looking forward to that process happening over the next two to three months.

Okay. And when would we expect this to likely come back to Parks Commission and then Council?

it'll go um quiet for a few months while we work on concept designs after public outreach so currently our target is parks and rec commission in february and council in march but those are tentative dates okay i have one last question which is a lot of the email advocacy that we have been receiving has been specifically you know to reject redact

reject the option with the fencing, thank you, and embrace, I believe, option B, which is no fencing. From what I am hearing from you, Mr. City Manager, we're going to be redeveloping potential options for the parks as a result of the public outreach that we're conducting now. Is that accurate?

yes i think the the better way to put it is we hadn't settled on any concept design options to present to council yet and we're continuing public outreach to to further define what those what those recommendations but there's currently no set options there's no set no no set options that are planned to go to council at this point they were all um set up for for public outreach purposes excellent thank you very much thank you

please um okay and so moving on um we'll move on to our consent calendar and uh City Clerk do you have a comment

Yes, mayor, council members, and the public. I wanted to give you all an update on Sunnyvale going back in time to a former practice of how the city council used to handle the consent calendar. So starting tonight, we're going to go back to the practice of instead of the mayor checking in with each individual person, asking which item they want to speak to, and then those items being separated and pulled from the consent calendar, we're going to return to the practice of the mayor opening public comment on the consent calendar immediately hearing all public comment on consent calendar items and then once public comment is closed council members will have the option if they're interested in pulling any consent calendar items for a separate consideration before there is a vote I don't know if any council members have questions about that before we move on with public comment on the consent calendar.

Thank you. I don't see any questions. City Manager, did you have any questions or comments?

i just wanted to before we get to the full consent calendar just uh brought bring to council's attention one particular change that we're proposing there are council policies on consent one of them is around meetings and we're proposing changing the start time of meetings to 6 p.m of the regular meeting to clarify this won't change how we handle study sessions We won't, meaning we won't start earlier than six to do a study session. What we'll do is start the regular meeting at six and hold the study session as the first item that we cover. Then we'll move into the regular meeting. So what this will in effect do is give more certainty to the public about when meetings start. They don't have to track when the regular meeting starts versus a study session. It'll all just start at six. And then, Will hopefully get us a little bit of extra time when we don't have study sessions to not go so late into the evening or give us a little bit more time to get through the regular business. So I wanted to share that we're planning on. If council adopts that change tonight, we would count plan on implementing that. um in january so with the changeover um for the new year we would do that and we would do uh um some public outreach beforehand to make sure the public is aware mayor i have a question for the manager council member how about the closed session will be before six o'clock i am assuming right closed session when we have to have them will likely be before six o'clock but they could also occur afterwards if we have a light agenda

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Historically, never. But anyway, thank you.

Thank you. With that, I will go ahead and open up public comments on consent calendar items. Public comments, as was said, will be heard before City Council takes action on consent calendar. Please submit a speaker card to the City Clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have two speaker cards in the room. Charlene L., followed by Zachary K.,

Hello, thank you for taking my comments. I'm Charlene Liu, and I would like to thank the City for making such progress on Homestead Road bike lanes. They're almost done. But I do want to point out that there are defects in the construction of these bike lanes. I sent an email last week to Council, so please consult it for further details. These defects were created during construction in 2024 when the construction of the bike lanes began. They are on the west end of Homestead Road between Mary and Bernardo. The first problem is that the bike lanes are too skinny. They are only two feet in some spots, and that goes against Caltrans guidance. It goes against NACTO guidance. There's no guidance I know of that go this skinny. The bike icon can't even fit. You can see that in the photo. Cyclists are forced to focus on balancing in the skinny bike lane instead of on passing cars. The second two problems are that there are longitudinal potholes in the bike lane, as you can see in the left photo, and the lip on the gutter seam is at places two inches high. And this is very hazardous. Next, this next photo shows that two years later after they were constructed, the two inch lip has crumbled and now it's replaced by a pothole. So these defects that I'm showing are not simply uncomfortable as they might be for a car, but they're actually very hazardous to cyclists. Cyclists could fall. I have notified the city about these defects multiple times, including to BPAC in 2024, to the city manager in 2025, the director of public works in just last week, and to access Sunnyvale in 2025. However, the problem persists. I hope the city can learn and improve the process, not just for these bike lanes, but for all bike lanes across the city. Can we improve the process so that this sort of thing doesn't happen again? Does the city inspect construction projects after completion? And if so, how did the inspector miss these glaringly large defects in the bike lane? Is it the case that the person inspecting is not quite sensitive enough to biking because they don't bike, which is very possible because not many people do bike. Could the active transportation planner instead inspect the bike lanes? This is the only person on staff who is a bike professional, and that would be a suitable inspector. So I hope we can learn from the homestead bike lanes. I hope also that the bike lanes will be fixed. I'm told that with the slurry seal that you're going to be approving the funding for, that they will be fixed, and I hope they will, but we'll go back and inspect it afterwards. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next up is Zachary Kay.

1.H adopt a resolution renaming the Donald M. Sommers Water Pollution Control Plant to the Sunnyvale Donald M. Sommers Clean Water Facility. This is of grandiose importance. When I spotted the Donald M. Somers Water Pollution Control Plant on a map something over a decade ago, I wasn't sure what it was. And now we're being asked to go to another level of obscurity, labeling it as a, quote, clean water facility, close quote, rather than its noble purpose of treating sewage. Why is it not okay to call something for what it is? When I was in elementary school and went over to one of my closest friends, you couldn't say, I need to go pee or I need to urinate. No, you had to say, I need to go tinkle. The naming seems to have a bit of the same flavor. A clean water facility could be nothing more than some filter screens to remove debris and sediment and injecting chloramine to kill off microbes, the kind of processing you would do with reservoir water. A pollution control plant, as it is now labeled, could be for processing hazardous waste. A sewage treatment plant is exactly that. People understand it. They see it on a map. They know what it is. It sure beats back in the day when raw sewage dumped into the bay. It is a wonderful thing. Let's actually call it as it is. Show a little backbone and go with the Donald M. Somers Sewage Treatment Plant. if for some unknown reason you can't handle the thought of what it processes leave the name as it is if that doesn't work the donald m somers tinkle plant thank you that was my last speaker card in the room city clerk do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on consent calendar items yes mayor first up is kevin j followed by henry s kevin you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the city council

Kevin, you may need to dial star six to unmute your phone.

Okay, I think I got it now. Thank you very much. Kevin Jackson, a concerned cyclist and longtime rider on Homestead Road. I'm also speaking to item 1E. I am pleased to see progress on the important safety improvements this project promises to deliver. However, you are aware of the serious problems with pavement deficiencies and dangerously narrow buffered bike lane widths in the initial phase of this project a couple of years ago, and I hope you will ensure that they are corrected and not repeated. One suggestion I believe will be a big help in this goal is to insist on compliance with the city's Complete Streets Policy Section B4, public outreach, which says to verify pedestrian and bicycling needs, the staff will seek input from the public and BPAC during the project development phase. Having input from people with significant real-world experience sharing the road with motor vehicle traffic will provide valuable insights that you are unlikely to get any other way. Please make sure this happens in order to maximize cyclist safety on this important bike corridor. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next up is Henry S. Henry, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes to address the City Council.

Good evening, a mayor and council members so for item one I, although I appreciate the city managers explanation on moving to a uniform 6pm start to simplify the public's experience, rather than tracking the study session that could potentially run long and delay the regular meeting. So that answers the administrative rationale. It doesn't completely answer the public access question as council policy 7.3.19 begins by emphasizing community inputs, citizen engagement, and the critical role council meetings play in conducting city business. So if the objective is accessibility, I would ask council to evaluate both sides of the clock. A uniform start time is easier to understand, but 6 p.m. is also an hour earlier than the current regular meeting, and that matters tremendously to people working right up until 5 or 6, hourly workers who can't leave early, commuters, parents, and caregivers. Maybe the net effect is positive, but where is that analysis in this report? Was 6 o'clock compared with maintaining a 7 o'clock regular meeting while restructuring study sessions? Was public participation at different meeting times examined? Was the public asked which arrangement is actually easier to attend? And this item does considerably more than change the clock. The red line changes in the late night framework incorporates study sessions into regular meetings, addresses the treatment of agenda items that aren't heard, and maintains specific standards governing council minutes. Yet at the same time, counsel is being asked to consent to amend other policies to eliminate six separate policies concerning law enforcement, asset forfeiture, fire services, support services, suicide prevention, and interim counsel appointments. Your own staff report itself distinguishes minor administrative clarification from substantive policy changes requiring formal council consideration. These are the latter. So my concern isn't that six o'clock start must be wrong. My concern is the process. If the justification for this change is greater simplicity and public accessibility, then show how that was evaluated against the burden created by an earlier start. convenience of administration and accessibility to the public are related but they are not automatically the same thing and substantive changes to the rules governing how public interacts with its council deserves discussion rather than disappearing inside a bundled consent item i would encourage council to pull this item one eye and have that discussion before adopting it thank you

Thank you. Mayor, that was the final remote public speaker for the consent calendar.

Okay. I'll go ahead and close public comment. Does any council member want to pull an agenda item?

I would like to pull one I and one J, please.

And what?

One J.

One I and one J?

Yes, please.

Just clarifying. Okay. Vice Mayor Mullinger? One E, please. One E, one I, one J.

Okay. And I'm also ready with a motion for the balance. I move that we accept the consent calendar recommendations for 1A through 1D, 1F through 1H.

Thank you, Councilmember Srinivasan.

Second.

And one moment, Councilmember Chang. Sorry. Never mind. Okay. The hand went up. Sorry. Thank you. Do you motion anything? Please vote yes. Thank you. City Clerk, can you please conduct the vote?

The motion for consent calendar items 1A through 1D and 1F through 1H carries 7-0.

Thank you. Let's go ahead and take first item 1E.

and that is the word of contract pavement coding in the amount of x for homestead road slurry seal um is there a staff report or comment council member or vice mayor mellinger uh thank you very much i do have a couple of questions on this before we vote on it uh mr city clerk could we get the slides from charlene lou back on the screen specifically showing the narrow bike lane And I think I might want to have some questions for Director Burt. So very briefly, Director, you know, when we hear about a buffered bike lane, the assumption is it is a five-foot lane with a two-foot buffer. Is that the general accepted implementation for a Class 2B buffered bike lane?

Yes.

So I'm not going to ask for an answer for this online because I don't expect you to have this at your fingertips, but I would be very curious to hear how this got designed and implemented in this fashion, because that's plainly not meeting that standard. The question I have for you is, is this location, I believe, and again, if we have to follow this up, is this location going to be covered by the slurry seal and if so, no? Okay. I would like to get an update after the, you know, at some point, follow up on what's going on with this location, how that happened, if there's further refinements planned.

yes vice mayor what I can say is that the issues that were brought forward by the citizen staff will be addressing that as part of the add-on work for the slurry seal project and we'll also be taking a look at this situation how it got striped at that size and seek to adjust that accordingly okay one more thing Mr. Carnahan could you advance to the photos of the gutters please

And to be clear, we'll be repairing these gutter seams as part of this work?

Yes, that's correct. From my understanding, speaking with staff, obviously I wasn't here at the time when this was put in. But it was put in correctly to begin with, but there was some defaults in the asphalt that ended up causing this type of breakage. The intent or the standard that you have in the transition between asphalt and the gutter along this line is to feather it. So it should be smooth. There should not be a lip of any sort of asphalt in these types of transitions. And so that will be corrected.

Okay, thank you. As a general question regarding general practice, when we do slurry seals or repavings, you know, do we go back and inspect periodically afterwards to see if a seam like this or a crack has developed?

There is a component of after post putting in the slurry seal or the repaving. Yes, that work is inspected, but sometimes with the nature of asphalt, Due to weather, due to impact to vehicles, you will get chipping like this. We don't inspect every foot of our asphalt, and we do rely on the public to bring these things to our attention so we can get them fixed.

And last thing, if you do see a gutter seam like this, you can file that on My Sunnyvale under potholes.

100% and we'll get it investigated. I have a team that can go out and patch asphalt like this.

Excellent. And I will say to the public, please download and install My Sunnyvale CA on your phone. It is the city's new CRM ticket system. If you see a pothole, cracked sidewalks, graffiti or anything else that's wrong with our physical infrastructure, you can use My Sunnyvale to take a photo, file a report, file a ticket, get a response from staff and make sure that it goes on our work queue to get it fixed. I have no further questions about this item and am prepared to move staff recommendation if... One moment. Councilmember Sell, do you have a question?

Yeah, I have a question about that claim that we see as narrow. you know, we learn from what we do. And so will some process be changed so that that'll be caught earlier in some way or do you still need to do that investigation?

I need to look into that specific location. What I do know, yes, we have NACDO standards. I mean, we have design standards that we strive for. Sometimes the physical condition on the ground where these types of infrastructure improvements are being put in, you can't go for the exact width that you want so maybe in this situation the decision was made in the field due to some condition all right we're going to put it in so we'll go with this standard it looks wonky it may not be correct but we will look at it and if we can make the adjustment we definitely will okay and the last thing is thank you for doing this investigation and how would the public know the result of the investigation just on your So the great thing about the My Sunnyvale app is basically it opens up a conduit and a direct communication link with that individual. They submit a work order or a service request. We acknowledge it. We go out and we investigate it. We update the CRM system and then that generates a notice to that individual. And we have that running dialogue and that documentation. And then once we get to a point where it is closed out, we will notice that and then a final closure email will go out to the citizen or whomever reported it.

Okay. And then failsafe is email as they did, email a staff, email a city council, make public comment. So thank you.

Yes. I will say though, on that point, when they email you, it goes to the office of the city manager and it gets put into my Sunnyvale. And then that's how we're going to communicate with that individual going forward.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

You bet. Thank you. Thank you. City manager.

Yeah, I was just going to comment that we were getting a little far away from the agenda topic, which is an award of a contract for slurry seal on a different section of Homestead. So I think it would be best, all councils always welcome to email us and ask specific questions like this about unrelated topics. But I think we're getting a little bit on the edge here.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. And in that spirit, I'd like to move the staff recommendation on 1E.

Thank you. Is there a second? I will second that. Do you have a motion?

I want to thank the members of the public for bringing this to our attention. It is important. I understand we do want to stay as tight to the agendas as we can. I did have some questions about how Homestead slurry sealing would interact with this, if at all. I want to thank Director Burke for answering my questions very satisfactorily. I will note that gutter seams, this is going to sound bizarre, are a particular passion of mine because nine years ago, my bicycle wheel got caught in a gutter seam and I broke my arm. And that probably worsened some of the injuries I had last year when I was hit. So definitely making sure that we're tracking these and getting these fixed where they are and definitely encourage members of the public to please actively file tickets on my Sunnyvale if you see unsafe street or sidewalk conditions. With that, I respectfully urge my colleagues I vote. Thank you. Thank you.

And with that, City Clerk, can you please conduct the vote on 1E?

The motion for agenda item 1E carries 7-0.

Thank you. We'll move on to item 1I, consider approval changes for the council policy manual. Councilmember Chang.

Oh, I'm mislabeled. OK. Sorry. I don't know why. OK. Sorry, my hand is out.

Council Member Lay.

Okay, thank you so much. I have a number of questions, but first of all, thank you to the ad hoc committee who looked over this policy manual. I am curious about the reasoning for removing the, 14-day posting period, especially for the utility rates. I think that with our last utility rates going up, that was something that the public was very interested in, and I would like to know why we are reducing that 14-day posting rate.

Does staff have a comment?

Thank you, Councilmember Lay. In that case, we are always striving to provide as much notice as possible. I think in recent years, we have not always hit the 14-day mark on those specific actions, but we always meet state law. So part of the effort of this council policy project update is reducing any duplication or any conflicts with state law. And so we're always going to remain compliant and in many cases more than providing extra time, more than what's required under state law.

Okay. So it sounds like operationally the previous policy was not, was difficult, so we're aligning to what we are more able to manage? Exactly. Okay. Thank you.

If I can add to that, and I'm sorry. Thank you, Sarah. If my recollection is correct, the 14 days came in prior to or around the time that the 45-day notice was implemented as state law. So remember that we have to give a pretty comprehensive 45-day notice in advance of the public hearing. That covers much, it's a summarized version of the staff report essentially. So the public does get a good long notice of when the hearing is going to happen and the reason for the rate changes.

Thank you. And then also I wanted to ask about the removal of the suicide prevention policy. It sounds like that will be, go somewhere else. Where will it go instead?

Yes, Council Member Lay, that is actually part of the recommended action tonight that that language is recommended to be moved into the long term advocacy positions associated with public safety. And so that is part of the red line. Let me get the correct attachment number in attachment number four to the staff report.

Okay, thank you. And then the last question I have is about the South Murphy outdoor dining permit. When are we expecting that fee schedule to return to council? Will that be with the new fee schedule next year?

Council Member Lay, we're working, CDD is working with the city manager's office to bring that to you and

either the next or the one after council meeting okay thank you that's my questions oh there's two of us thank you vice mayor mellinger so i city manager kirby has mostly answered this for me i was going to ask what the legal standard was from the state that applies that replaces the 14 days the 45 days is essentially the legal standard yes that's correct um okay so and to be clear the other policy removals in this document were primarily because they were duplicative is that correct that's correct thank you um i have no further questions i will be ready with a motion when my colleagues including both council members chang are done thank you thank you council member chang or council member lay

Thank you, we updated the names.

Okay. So it's fixed now. Thank you. Council Member Chang.

I was wondering if staff could share a little bit more about that time change to 6pm if they've looked at other cities and what the general practices, if they could just share a little bit more.

yes council member chang um we we did um look somewhat at other cities it does vary we also looked back at how often we have study sessions and most of the time for most of council's meetings you do have study sessions that start earlier than 7 pm and so most of the time we we do have some level of public participation at that time We don't have like a scientific analysis of, you know, the hours of public participation, but we do anecdotally notice that as it gets later and later into the evening, the public participation drops off. And so I think, you know, there was some discussion with the ad hoc committee about a number of these factors, but one of the things that staff was thinking about was the trade off between, you know, going that late into the evening and it's difficult for members of the public also to remain available. many of your current council meetings go past midnight and so it's really up to council if you would like to approve this change but you know I think our driving factor was really consistency of start time and I would say that that is more of the routine with other cities is the Predictable consistent start time whatever that start time is, and so the variability that we've had with different start times for different study sessions and regular meetings is what started this discussion.

Great Thank you and i'll just say that I think I have had people talk asked me what time meeting starts at 536 so I do hear that it is confusing at times for people.

Thank you. Next up is Councilmember Sal.

I had a question. So if the study sessions are embedded in now the meeting, like when there was a definite section for study session, the study session was confined to a certain time. I was just wondering with the 6 o'clock, will you still strive for it to be an hour or a certain time? Or how will you control that so it doesn't take over the meeting? Just wondering.

I appreciate the question. I'll start by saying I don't control the city council. So I would say that we are always doing time estimates on our draft agendas and we'll always shoot for probably around an hour for a study session, depending on the topic. But the constraint will go away and it will be up to council to constrain yourselves during the meeting.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Um, next up council member Cisneros.

Yes. Thank you. Um, I was actually going to ask that exact question, but I think, so then it's up to the chair to decide how, how long we do it. And the chair has, so when you say council has the ability to do that, are you talking about the chair or is it more like a regular, this is functioning like a regular item?

The study sessions would continue to function as they do today. So I think the vice mayor would chair the study session and then the mayor would take on the regular meeting and general business.

Okay. Okay. And so the key takeaway here is that city business study sessions, regular items don't start before 6 p.m. Whereas now we've had, you know, a number, I've been here for a couple of years now, It can start as early as five. I've even seen a 4.30 on the occasion when we have multiple study sessions to start. So now the public can expect a consistent start time rather than, and a lot of these study sessions are of great interest to folks. And I appreciate the member of the public that addressed the, that brought up the concern of, hey, people work and they wanna participate. Like, are we making it easier? In my mind that is served this way. Was that part of that analysis?

I think we would, I wouldn't wanna say that we're never gonna start earlier because I don't wanna constrain us to get city business done, but that is the idea is to start vastly the majority of all meetings and all city business at 6 p.m. And I think Assistant City Manager Sarah Johnson-Rios made a great point and one that I actually hear more commonly is when we have items that start very late, people with families, with small children, with jobs also the next day, they struggle to stay for those items. So that actually affects our agenda planning. We try not to take things that are of public interest very late. And this would allow us, I think, also to get more business done in a timeframe that is more amenable for a lot of people. But as Sarah stated, it really is a council choice and we of course will support whatever council wants to do.

Yeah, absolutely. That makes total, that makes complete sense. The one thing that I would ask is if we have, if we're on a more consistent schedule with this, when there is a deviation, like you said, you know, we have latitude if city business requires it for some reason to go ahead and move something earlier is that we really highlight that on the agenda and make sure it's bold, maybe a different color. I don't know. But if people are expecting it just to make it very clear, because now it's like, well, it varies. So we don't necessarily have to call that out.

Correct.

Great. And I'll note on the late hour piece as well. You know, the council members up here are humans. And, you know, a lot of us, too, did a whole day before coming to the council meeting. And then you come to 1230 and, you know, we're not as smart as we were at 8 p.m., So we all, I know that I, but my colleagues have expressed too, we want to be making the best decisions in the best conditions possible. And you get late enough, it just gets difficult. So this will hopefully really solve for a lot of different things that we want to address all at once. So thank you very much for all the work and to the subcommittee as well.

Thank you. Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Thank you very much. If there are no further questions from my colleagues, I'm prepared.

Council Member Sell.

um i have noticed that um the later the meeting is the less participation there is so just thank you vice mayor if there are no further questions or comments from my colleagues on this uh i would like to move staff recommendation or item for item one i thank you is there a second i will second council member lay thank you to your motion uh thank you very much mr mayor i appreciate it and thank you very much to the subcommittee on uh policy that met to discuss this a couple of weeks ago um you know one of the initiatives that we've been moving forward this past couple of years is cleaning up our council policy handbook there are some there have been some truly ancient relics that we have found in there the requirement for bicycle parking for establishments with arcade machines is a particular favorite It is important that we keep our city code and our city policies tight and that we do not allow them to drift out of alignment with state law or other council policies or ordinances. So removing duplication is very, very important and valuable there. uh with regard to the issue of council start time i do believe that having a more regular 6 p.m start time and having study sessions incorporated into the regular meeting does make that clearer to the public that they just know that if there's something happening they should probably show up here at 6 pm instead of having to go check and say oh well there's a study session at you know that's before the main meeting and etc etc so i'm hoping that gets us better public participation in study sessions and i'm also hoping that this leads to earlier finish times for our council because um not only members of the public are struggle with 12 30 a.m discussions i personally struggle with those discussions and i personally have as many other of my colleagues do have a job to be at the following morning so you know ensuring an earlier finish time is going to improve the quality of council discussion and deliberation and i hope improve accessibility to the public i respectfully urge my colleagues i vote thank you thank you and with that city clerk can you please conduct the vote the motion for agenda item one i carries seven zero

and we have additional 1j i'm questioning whether or not well this will be a longer discussion this will be quick okay thank you okay all right we'll move on to item 1j approve a take no city position on proposed league of california city's 2026 annual conference resolution

um thank you uh two questions here did staff consider a uh opposition to this in addition to the uh in addition to the recommendation um the stated reasoning was that it was too vague but ultimately i think the resolution um It's for final local authority over housing approvals, which seems undesirable. So are we, did we consider opposition in addition?

Thank you for the question Council Member Lay. We primarily focused on inquiring for more information about the intent of the proposal and trying to get more specifics about the proposal and how exactly the city of Murrieta ultimately would want to see that carried forward and we weren't able to get enough specific information to be able to recommend to council a position and I think you know we were looking at all of the council policies on file or both around being a pro-housing city that supports housing and also around preserving appropriate local control over over other land use decisions and so given the lack of clarity with the proposal on the table we recommend not taking a position

Okay, and then, secondly, for those of us who are going to calcities if the resolution is amended during that time is a delegate to exercise their best judgment or to just follow continue to follow council's direction here.

That's a great question. I would advise counsel the delegates to become familiar with the legislative advocacy positions. That's really what staff evaluates. And if if you do have any questions for staff, and we can try to be available, you know, real time, we're happy to try to do that. Thank you.

And Council Member Lay, I'll be in attendance with Council at the conference and can serve as a resource for you at that time if there's changes.

Thank you. That's all my questions.

Thank you. I see no other questions. Vice Mayor Mellinger?

I'm ready to move staff recommendation on 1J. Thank you. Council Member Sreenivasan? Second.

Thank you. To your motion.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I think that the staff recommendation does strike a good balance here. There are obviously serious concerns about the impact of state housing law on much of our local control, including around the village center redevelopments and other areas where we have been hoping to maintain or grow commercial and mixed use. That said, in general, I am very very cautious about legislation from the ballot box as it is very inflexible and can lead to uh quite profound unintended consequences down the line um so i'm happy that uh i i think i'm happy with this staff recommendation i think it strikes a good balance between those concerns uh i respectfully urge my colleagues i vote thank you thank you and city clerk please conduct the vote

The motion for consent calendar item 1J carries 7-0.

Thank you. That will finish our consent calendar items. I know people have been waiting for the presentations, but let's go ahead and take a five-minute recess and come back at 8.45. Sorry. Let's go ahead and reconvene and move on to our presentations. Thank you everyone for waiting. First up is item 26-0452, presentation by high school students in the Sunnyvale Youth Advisory. I'll pass it to our students for the presentation.

yeah um hi good evening council my name is maddie i'm a sunnyvale resident and high school senior um we're going to be doing introductions for each of our members as they present their own slides but um next slide please just a quick introduction on who we are we are a group of high school students who host bi-weekly meetings under the guidance of council members um we came here last year to give a presentation on the different community projects that we're doing and we're here again with some substantive updates on all of the things we're doing and then a ton of new work that we hope to better engage the youth in Sunnyvale. So again, we help do community based projects specifically focusing on Sunnyvale and students and then also help advise City Council and bring our perspective as students whenever there is a really large issue that is currently affecting City Council. Next slide, please. And then this is just a quick overview on the eight projects we're going to be going through today. And yeah, next slide.

Hi my name is Dharani. I'm the lead for the peer-to-peer support academic support platform. So the mission of this platform is to create a space where middle school students can ask questions to each other about like homework for instance. One thing that this increases is accessibility to help outside of school hours and it enables peer-to-peer collaboration so students can help each other work through difficult assignments which coming from like a student myself is one of the best ways to understand concepts um it features a safe school space um digital digitally designed platform specifically for students to collaborate and our next steps are working with the Sunnyvale school district for initial implementation next slide please

I'm Parnika Jagadi, a sophomore at Fremont High, and I'm also the co-founder of Connected Youth, which is a teen platform that allows teens to get connected with their community. We firsthand as teens know the struggle of having 12 tabs open to find a summer internship, which you've already missed the deadline of. To solve this problem, we put our efforts into a one-stop shop that lets teens find all their resources in one place. We hope to have a fully functioning program in which teams can be more involved with their community through volunteering camps, classes, and more. Our first project is partnering with NovaWorks to create a video series featuring careers in Silicon Valley, and I'll let my co-founder elaborate on that.

Hi, my name is Jasmine Lee. One of the main reasons why we even started this video series was to bring awareness to different careers in Silicon Valley, right? I'm from Homestead, Parnika's from Fremont, and we both have career days at our school. But career days are 10 minutes long per career, and all the career choices are not that broad. They don't showcase wonderful careers like a council member or a public safety officer, right? So we hope with this video series that we can bring different awareness to different careers that make Sunnyvale, Sunnyvale, right? So hopefully in this video series we have videos of an interview with someone in the profession, and we can ask some questions that teens might have with this career. Can I give them advice, a glimpse in their life of what it's like in this career? Thank you.

Okay, so our next project is on Responsible AI Students AI Fluency Program. The goal of this project is to teach our peers how to understand and use AI, artificial intelligence responsibly. We started We're aiming this program for middle schoolers, but we plan to expand it on high schoolers since this is a really prevalent field and it affects everyone. We already designed a curriculum and we finished a six-day pilot program over the summer with 12 sign-ups and a lot of parent support. Our next steps are working with the Sunnyvale School District to implement this program. Next slide, please. The next program is a science fair project. We're running a science fair for elementary and middle schools in partnership with the Sunnyvale School District. This is tentative in March and we're planning to host it in the Sunnyvale Middle School. Our impact or goal is to promote science and empowering students to explore STEM pathways since this is a very big field in Sunnyvale specifically and our role would be to mentor students to design research products.

Yeah, and just to elaborate on this a bit more, it was originally a brainchild of Councilmember Shinpa-san and then also our superintendent from Sunnyvale School District. So we're currently still in the planning phases. But again, as the Silicon Valley, I think it's really important to empower especially our minority groups to pursue things in STEM fields and ensure that they do have the mentorship growing up in all areas of Sunnyvale to pursue these kind of careers and interests if they're interested. Next slide.

Hi, Council. My name is Niliraj Kumar. I'm a sophomore at the King's Academy, and my project is Pluto Youth Services. So Pluto Youth Services is an organization that I own, and it connects local high schoolers with local businesses. We want to give high schoolers the opportunity to get better when it comes to social media, AI support, and marketing. And we want to help businesses with problems that they're facing, like social media, AI, and marketing. so by putting both these problems together we created a program where high schoolers can go and help these businesses and solve some of the problems they're facing high schoolers are getting real world experience actually going in person to these businesses and giving them this support some notable businesses that we've worked with include Sunnyvale Rumble Boxing and Cupertino Rotary Club we hope to work with the Sunnyvale school district on this further to you know get volunteer hours verified and to get more exposure of this program during schools school time and stuff like that thank you so much

And then this is just a program that has been in motion for these past few years, so it started back in 2024 when it was just myself and then two other students who came weekly to volunteer at Bishop elementary and it has now expanded to almost 15 volunteers who are planning to come to our. Sunnyvale schools, specifically Bishop, and we're currently working with the school district to expand this to around four or three to four additional schools in partnership with a nonprofit to actually fund stipends for some of our students to be able to tutor at these schools. So at Bishop, I was actually just there today, but we had a bunch of students and just community members come out to help these kids read to help them with math and provide them with additional intervention support and this kind of one-on-one mentorship that they wouldn't otherwise be able to get it's completely volunteer based and doesn't cost anything for the school districts and seeing the model be so successful in sunnyvale is why we've had the opportunity to actually expand it outward and expand it to 10 other school districts this past year So we're currently working in schools in CUSD, we're working in Orchard, Oak Grove, and just a lot of high schools in the Bay Area. Sorry, not high schools, but elementary school districts in the Bay Area. We've done a lot of work in partnering with our County Office of Education, but always really focusing on Sunnyvale and making sure our students are able to get this kind of additional support they need. Again, at Bishop, we're doing a lot of great work. We've actually invited a few parents and community members who also want to give back their time. My dad actually is planning to start Come and Volunteer as well, just to help these kids read and do reading fluency. We divide all the students into groups and work based on their grade level. I think we've seen really measurable results. A lot of the kids we worked with went from below average standardized testing to actually above average through the year that we worked with them. So I think it's been a really great effort that's been going on in Sunnyvale.

Hi Council, my name is Aditya Vishwanath and I'm currently a sophomore at Wilcox High School. So today I'll be talking about the heritage preservation video series. So the goal of this project is kind of to understand and analyze how our society and how our heritage of Sunnyvale has impacted local leaders and how they've turned that around and impacted the Sunnyvale community. So we've started this project earlier in February, and we've made a lot of progress. We interviewed over 12 different people, including the majority of city council, Diane McKenna and multiple other people. The goal of this project is kind of to showcase this to the Sunnyvale public. One way that we're planning on doing this is working with Jane Sun. She is the She's working at the Heritage Preservation Museum, and she's looking for exhibits to showcase to the elementary schoolers. And one idea that we had together was to kind of ensure a heritage through the past and now to the present. So we want to understand how Sunnyvale leaders have impacted the community from earlier in the 1900s to now. So the idea of this video series is to actually create a lasting legacy of Sunnyvale. One other step that we planned on doing is conducting around 8 to 10 more interviews before editing it and turning it in to work on an exhibit with Jane Sun. And we also plan on showcasing this at like a Heritage Day event or something that we can to ensure that the general Sunnyvale public will be made aware of this and know more about our local leaders in Sunnyvale and our heritage. I'll let Nella talk more about the other people that we have interviewed.

Next slide, please. So here are a few of the people that we have interviewed. We're hoping to interview more people. And like Aditya said, we want to put it in a video that eventually we put in the Heritage Museum. We continue to reach out to people, and hopefully we'll get enough videos for the Heritage Museum. Thank you.

Next slide. And then the final project that this group has kind of undertaken this past year was to increase the number of youth who serve on our city commissions and advisory bodies. So two current Sunnyvale youth advisory members, myself and Nilla, both currently serve on commissions. the Housing and Human Service Commission and then the Sustainability Commission respectively. So in our own capacity, we've really been trying to break down the role of commissions in an easy to understand way and explicitly say, hey, even though you might not know this, but you can actually apply to be on an official city commission. And when people hear this, they're always like, wow, this seems like a really cool opportunity. So this has been predominantly done by word of mouth, social media, and then also just emailing to some of the schools in Sunnyvale to say, hey, this is an opportunity that you can advertise to the students. So counselors have been a great access point, the school admin. I think there has been a very measurable increase in the number of youth applicants who apply to these different commissions. I think it went from maybe one to two commissions to almost 15 youth who actually applied to these roles now that they're aware of it and i think that really does show the power of when you invite youth into these spaces how easily they're able to say okay well now that i'm actually invited into the space i would love to be in it so just definitely encouraging so that even like when myself um when i'm off to college i would definitely just hope that the city continues to do this very intentional outreach to all of our students to ensure that they know that they belong on these commissions and that their voice matters in these official government spaces as well. Next slide. Awesome. So that was our brief overview of all the different projects. I think we can move on to questions from Council, if anyone has any.

Thank you. Does Council have any questions or comments? Vice Mayor Mellinger.

What's one thing you each have learned while doing this that you've just found particularly interesting or that has resonated with you?

I think for myself it's definitely been the power of just a singular voice, I think i'm often really surprised at how receptive all these adults are to actually listening to our students and also very thankful for. Just the council's willingness to meet and hear just a single person's idea, even when they don't have a coalition of support yet and really being able to give that mentorship to youth so. Yeah, I think I'm always learning that it's never a bad thing to just send that email and ask because you never know what the response might be.

I think for me, before I joined this kind of organization, I had no idea what was going on in the city. But after joining this, I realized so many ways the youth can make an impact on their city and kind of speak for themselves. So I really like the thing that we have to offer when we do this.

This is a hard question. I think one thing I learned is that everyone's going to have different opinions on what you're doing. And if you listen to them, you're not going to get anywhere. And I feel like that's probably a lesson that you'll only learn once you actually face it. I feel like if someone tells you that, it's not going to be something that you're able to easily process. So I think that's one thing I learned. And I think that's one thing that I still struggle with. Yeah, that's the thing that I learned.

One thing that I learned is the power of encouragement and support. When we interviewed a lot of people in the heritage preservation, a lot of people said that they started their political careers just because of one or two single compliments from other people or one or two statements that people said. So a lot of it is based on compliments and support from others that led everyone to be who they are today. So I think one thing I learned is to always be supportive and encourage everyone around you.

One thing I learned is to constantly learn. Back with what we're working on with careers, it's really easy to see only the careers that are on TV or the little scope of careers. But there's so many other careers in this world that make up who we are today, right? So to keep on learning and going past the little shelter we're in to look beyond that, to keep on learning.

I think it can be very daunting to be the youngest in the room and think that you can actually make a change in the world. I think the youth advisory has taught me that no matter how old or young you are, you have the power to create change in the world and that's what inspired me the most.

Thank you all very much. I want to say that Aditya's comment particularly resonated with me because a little more than nine years ago, I gave a public comment in our old council chambers and Mayor Klein said, would you like to get coffee? And he may have lived to regret that decision, but just one person reaching out like that really can make a difference. Thank you all.

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

I just want to say you are all so impressive. Just in a small amount of time, you could explain the complicated thing you're working on and the reason for it and the importance. So that's a tremendous work that you've done. And also great that Council Member Sreenivasan has mentored you. I know it's taken a lot of time. And it's good that you have a really great working relationship. The last thing is, how do you, do you foresee this, you will be going off to college and do you foresee this continuing this beyond when you're off to college?

Yeah, for sure. So I think the important part of anything that you do is always thinking about sustainability and how it's going to continue even if you aren't physically present here anymore. So I think that's why we've really emphasized bringing in people of all ages. Just in this room, I think almost everyone here is still an underclassman. So there definitely is a lot of continuity that is going to happen. We've all built strong relationships with council members on our own right and it's not just me doing all the talking all the time or facilitating all the conversations. We have people step in to lead when I'm not available and I think that's been really prevalent these past few months and I think so yeah definitely we're gonna have a lot of people who are currently in the group just step up and take that role and hopefully pass it down to future grades as they come into their high school journeys. Yeah, thank you so much. Great organization.

Thank you, Councilmember. Next up is Councilmember Chang.

Thank you for staying late and presenting. Speaking to our earlier point, I think it can be difficult for you all to stay here and present at 9 p.m., so I'm glad in the future we're going to be moving our council meetings earlier. I had two questions. The first one about your peer-to-peer tutoring. How do you screen or recruit the tutors?

Yeah, for sure. So I think we really try to recruit directly from our high schools. So the outreach process usually looks like reaching out to all the counselors at Fremont, Wilcox, the King's Academy, Homestead, and things like that, having them kind of do a email blast to all of the students available. We also make sure that they're cleared by the district before volunteering, so making sure that we follow all of the clearance processes. And then when we do train the volunteers, it is kind of like a face to face zoom call to make sure that they are a legitimate person they aren't someone pretending to be underage or anything like that just to build that kind of credibility and I think we haven't had any issues so far, but definitely a precautionary step that we like to take to ensure that our students are being safe in our elementary schools.

Thank you, and then I have a question if we have topics that are interested, for example, if we want to know. how Sunnyvale BEAM is working for the youth. Is that something that we can suggest as a topic or how would we engage with you all?

Yeah, for sure. So I think definitely contacting either Council Member Srinivasan or myself. I think I had my email up there. So if you just reference the slides, you can always reach out to myself and I can put that as one of our agenda items and would definitely encourage all of our council members to kind of pursue that in case they're interested in soliciting any additional input. In the past, we have led these youth study sessions on things like the Tasman bike lanes and then actually created a presentation and report for City Council that we advocated for as an end product. So yeah, definitely a great avenue to increase public input. Great, thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Councilmember Cisneros.

Yes, thank you. Thank you all for presenting so concisely, so eloquently. I am a Homestead High School alum myself, class of 05, so a little bit ago, but yeah, I'm really proud of you all. You're doing a really wonderful thing, not just for yourselves and your own development. The public speaking that I learned in high school through theater really directly informed what I did in my career and what I felt comfortable being able to do. So you're really investing in yourself, but you're also taking that and helping to invest in others. So I have a couple of comments to consider for the future, perhaps expansions, and then some questions too. Well, number one, I want to say like, I'm sure that my colleague council member, Shreya Navasan, is not remiss in reminding you to collect metrics, metrics, metrics on every single thing you do, because when you're presenting or you're trying to expand something, being able to talk about like, this many people came through this many inquiries we got and like just even over record it so that you have that data to report back. I think that's a good habit to get into, especially for things like this, where it's a little bit it can be intangible. You're making the intangible tangible by creating those metrics. But I'm sure that he's helping you do that. The careers in Silicon Valley, I really love this because our economy moves very fast and college is not the only pathway to success either. And this is able to capture, as you mentioned, like we didn't see, you didn't see like public safety necessarily at that career fair where, so we're missing some spots. I think that's a very valuable thing and it's accessible to anyone from their homes. That's great. For the science fair for elementary and middle school, I'm like, I remember one.

Where did it go? Isn't it not there?

But apparently it went somewhere and you bring it back. So I appreciate that. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to attract interest from students who don't necessarily self-select into the STEM fields?

Sorry, by self-select, I guess like if they're not directly encouraged to join STEM fields?

Yeah, like it's not already an interest of theirs, right? So we're looking at, let's generate interest in STEM. That was something that was said.

so i was just wondering how do you do that specifically for the students who may not see themselves as scientists yet yeah for sure i think it's really important to emphasize just how broad the stem fields is and when you're in elementary or middle school you might think of stem as oh i have to be a chemist or an engineer and that's kind of limiting your view of what the field actually entails. But I think when you emphasize how much intersection there is between STEM and all these other fields, then that can make it a lot more appealing to the students. For example, the intersection of like environmental science that has including like public policy, but also analyzing like using data to support your policy that you're trying to advocate for. So just really emphasizing the different intersections that there are. I think on a personal note, the reason that I felt discouraged from STEM was because I wasn't the best at math or science growing up. So I think receiving direct encouragement from things like peer-to-peer support programs peer-to-peer tutoring programs where they do have this mentor who's constantly encouraging them that say like hey you are great at math like you really ace that problem I think is another great way of really just encouraging our Sunnyvale youth to go into these STEM uh fairs and just career paths I think when they see things like this STEM um uh science fair so visible with so many students involved across their district they'll be like okay maybe this is something i do want to pursue maybe this is something i actually can be interested in and when they see such a wide array of projects from things like solar panels to things like testing the different hypotheses or plant growing i think they can really see the range of what the field offers and feel more encouraged that way

Yeah, I think that's a great answer. Expand it, expand the definition of what it means. And like, what do you think about a science fair making a volcano with baking soda and vinegar or something like that? It's not that. And being able to articulate that. And same with the math and science. I wish you all were around and have that attitude that might have changed some things. So that's great. Then for the Pluto Youth Services, really awesome results there. I don't have any questions necessarily but wanting to maybe you already do it, but consider in the future, working with the administration and high schools for the work study program because some of these could even turn into paid opportunities and there are students who. for various reasons, really want a paid opportunity outside of school. And so working with the administration to get the right permissions and make sure that things are structured so that that's a potential opportunity, that could be a next step for some things, not all of them, obviously, but that could even get more people involved in that program. And then for the Youth on Commissions campaign, I'm familiar with it because we're up there and I love seeing youth apply for these commissions your perspective is really valuable and it's really impressive because you're doing something that a lot of people a lot older than you are pretty scared to do so it's exciting um how do you prep other youth as you're asking them to get involved do you prep them at all for how to go through these meetings because we sometimes ask similar questions every time uh or you know different things to do to be successful

Yeah, so I think when we are prepping youth, I think we really try to emphasize that you don't need to be some sort of expert or PhD holder in the field. The commission really is a place for you to bring your student perspective, so you don't have to pretend to be something that you're not. You don't have to read 5,000 research papers. Obviously, it's important to be well prepared for the meeting so you know what's going on, but you don't have to retain some kind of PhD level knowledge to be in the room. So I think we really try to emphasize, okay, if you see like a slide about outreach, do you think there's a gap in terms of, hey, maybe they're not reaching to students and then offering your perspective as a student on how you think that this organization can better do outreach to students what groups are they missing from a student i think whenever there is a new person on a commission who is a high school student we really try to give mentorship to them i know that um nila definitely had a lot of questions um i think joshua who served on the previous human relations commission asked me a ton of questions as well so really building that peer-to-peer mentorship pipeline to offer any advice and really just be a supportive ear. I think it also helps to reference previous commission meetings and just maybe just watch it in three times speed and say like, hey, what did this high school student say about this issue in the past and trying to apply that. And also just I always advise to really listen to what the public is saying, really listening to public comments, making sure you're taking notes to maybe follow up on one of the issues that they're bringing up and making sure you're reading every single email that

the sustainability or the staff member lies and is sending you because those have a lot of great information on the topics that are going to be discussed fantastic I love to see how much support there is on the back end and even post like knowing like you're not just applying and then I'm going to be out in open water without a without a paddle without support and that you're still there for Anna Voelker, If they still have a group there to navigate that is wonderful, and I will also just make a comment on that is, I feel that this help contributes to closing a really critical civic literacy gap. Anna Voelker, That we have in our entire society, I would say, I used to teach at the answer and political science and we go over local government and. you just don't get that in your social studies, your civics classes. And that is a shame because this is actually pretty interesting and really relevant to everyone's lives. And I feel like my experience is when you explain the engagement, people do want to participate and you can really make something change. So that's, I think a bigger social level importance to that. But really, really wonderful work. I thought all the programs were great and beneficial. Thank you for your service to the community.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Lay.

Thank you so much. First, a quick logistics question. When you go to Bishop to do literacy support, do you need to do fingerprints and do you need help with that? We do not need to do fingerprints because we're under 18. Okay, fantastic. I was wondering how that went. Okay, so with that out of the way, thank you for so much that you do. I think someone else said that we're proud of you, but more than that, I feel like I'm inspired by you, by the level of engagement that you have, by the connections that you're building in the community by the forethought you're putting into these projects that you're pursuing all these things are wonderful projects all these things are things that someone should do and i'm just so pleased to see that the youth in our city the people people like you are taking it upon themselves to do it and finding the connections that you need and figuring things out and with with guidance with support going out into the community becoming commissioners having these these businesses and helping in these internships. That's amazing. Thank you so much. I am so inspired by what you can do. You are so much cooler than I was in high school. And I just have so much hope for not just you, but youth generally, so that as you're going into Bishop and you're building these peer networks with younger children, for example, my son is 11 and at his elementary school he did this like big brother, little buddy thing with the TK kids. And that mentorship is, you know, the beginning of a relationship where kids, where I can go in and I can tell my son something, or I can tell these other kids something because we're in a parent participation school. But it means so much more to children when they see it from someone so much closer to their age, someone who still gets it, someone who was born, you know, not in the 80s. so thank you so much you guys these projects are really awesome really inspiring and so are you please give yourselves a patent back i can't reach thank you thank you next up is council member sreenivasan actually mayor i can go last if you have vice mayor yeah real quick i just wanted to say um you know something i heard

resonated very strongly with me, and I want to emphasize this for any youth who may be watching, is the emphasis that you don't have to be deep policy experts to participate and that your role as youth actually is not to be the deep policy experts, though it is very impressive the depth of the research that you are doing. Youth and young people who are looking to get involved in our city shouldn't feel that they need to become experts on a topic for their voice to be valued. And I have to emphasize again how impressive your advocacy is. And I just want to make sure to any other youth who might be watching this meeting or listening in that they understand that their voice is welcome here as they are, and that your power doesn't come from being policy experts. It comes from being youth. And that unique perspective that that brings, so I want to thank you again for sharing that perspective with us and I'll hand things over to my colleague council member or to the mayor, whichever.

Councilman, go ahead. I will. I'll wrap up. Okay.

Okay. 1st of all, thanks a lot for presenting. All these projects are very, very impressive. It's such a. pleasure working with this group of talented individuals. And then of course, there are a lot more people who couldn't come today. The thing is, all the projects were suggested by the students themselves my role here is i won't call myself mentor i'm more of a catalyst i bring the connection and then help them out to do the projects whether it's i i don't want to single out any of the projects but for example the career project i connected them with no works or heritage project any of these projects similarly all the high school all the uh after school program uh projects are very very impressive uh and then lot of the one of the things which sunnyvale youth advisory is very good about this is my opinion is what i called experimentation there are a lot of ideas which didn't make it to these slides. And then we know what they are. And then a lot of them are very impressive and it's still in planning stages. But by increasing the experimentation, which eventually we will learn why it failed or why it succeeded, that's very, very important. One of the things I want to emphasize is the science fair, which Superintendent Goodell and myself, we are kind of sponsor or we initiated this project. I think one of the premise there was to encourage our elementary and middle school students to get interested in science and math, STEM, basically. Because once a student comes to high school, STEM, if they are not interested, catching up is very, very tough. The good thing is we are getting a lot of interest from Stanford University, Slack, Stanford Linear Accelerator, Amazon, Moffitt Park business groups, Maker Nexus wants to do a lot of hands-on projects there, robotics teams from various high schools. So hopefully that will be our goal is This will be an annual event going forward, but the first instance is the toughest one. And then regarding your question, any suggestion is welcome. I think we are looking for projects and then a lot of students seems to be very, very interested. The good thing about these projects are it's so diverse. can participate. For example, I know there were a couple of students who wanted to do cats-related or pet-related projects. So those kinds of things, since the spectrum is very, very large or wide, students can pursue whatever they are interested. So I am really, really honored and proud to be part of this team. Thank you very much. Great presentation. You stuck to 15 minutes. That was excellent. Thank you.

Thank you. And so I just want to say, you know, it's inspiring as always to hear what you've been working on. And, you know, I talk to some of you more than others, but I just want to say thank you to Council Member Srinivasan for helping kind of overseeing this, whether or not he's mentoring or, being a catalyst, that's important. That's part of what council is. Looking back, I've talked to several of you. It's like my first night on council 10 years ago. It was a middle school student who came in front of us saying with a good idea about the all access, all abilities playground uh that ultimately became magical bridge playground at fair oaks park and so you know it it's making sure that we find places for those youth voices in our community and especially in our council chambers and so thank you for for what you're doing working with with council member serena boston but also working with all the youth getting them more involved showing them that they can give back, not just within middle school, elementary school, helping others at their age, but giving recommendations to council working on our boards and commissions. So thank you for that. That looks like all the questions from council. So go ahead and have a seat. We'll do a quick public comment if people have public comment, and then we'll call you back up for just a final speech. With that, um i will go ahead and move to public comment on this item please submit a speaker card to the city clerk raise your digital hand now or dial star 9 on your telephone indicate that you wish to speak i will call on members of public participating in person first followed by remote participants speakers will have two minutes to speak i have no speaker cards in the room city clerk do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item no mayor okay um i will go ahead and close public comment and And I just want to say thanks again thanks for staying late sorry sorry on a school night where we're keeping you here late but, but it is truly inspiring for what you what you told Council tonight and an update on what you've been doing so thank you. Okay.

So sure, Vice Mayor and quick note, because I think I did see someone possibly raising a hand in the audience to submit public comment.

Do we need to reopen or I will go ahead and reopen if you want to come reopen public comment.

Go ahead and come to the lectern and before you do in general, the best thing to do. There are speaker cards at the back and you can fill those out with the agenda item, but come on forward.

you're speaking on this item uh i'm i'm speaking on their presentation on this next presentation okay so not this presentation we just saw this next item okay sorry this time yeah so please come forward to the lecture sorry two minutes okay i just wanted to make a quick comment on them because like i felt like it really resonated with me

So like my background, I grew up around Silicon Valley's technology ecosystem where like technology, semiconductors, software, and like additional logistics and all that all overlap. So I found it really interesting because I was previously involved with the Santa Clara area before moving to the Sunnyvale area. And really all my involvement led me to like, consider like seeing how I can intersect that with the public and express it to the public so that it's not just in my own head. And that led me to like being really interested in urban strategy and community engagement. So I thought it was a great idea that you were trying to engage people in STEM, but I also saw it could be a great idea to also engage them in expressing their STEM to like the public, such as the council members. And yeah, that's my first comment. And additionally, like to express that I see that companies and schools and all that can have a partnership. So I was thinking like maybe you could also consider like trying to get companies and schools to partner with each other, especially here in Silicon Valley where there's like this entire technology ecosystem. So yeah, that's my second comment. Sarah, I just thought that there are certain aspects of STEM that's really able to connect with people, such as GIS, for example, which helps people understand land use and local issues, or such as environmental science. So I just thought that was a great idea to express. So yeah, thanks for having me. And yeah, that is all.

Thank you very much.

I had a comment for that. Very good. Council Member Srinivasan. Thanks for your feedback. Really appreciate your comments on various technologies. If you want to participate, contact one of the groups there. Can I join?

Sorry? Can he join? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah. Go for it. Thank you.

Just email them. why don't you have to marry there okay with that we will go ahead and close public comment and i'll thank i'll thank all the students who presented tonight and looking forward to seeing you here again let's say in a year on what new things that you've accomplished so thank you We'll move on to our next item, item 26-0465, Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District Introduction and Project Update. Thank you. We're finally getting to this item. And that will be by District Board members Jed Cyr and Karen Holman.

Oh. That's good.

What do you think? This is an introduction. We do this every couple of years just to bring council up to speed about Mid-Peninsular Regional Open Space District. So this is the update. And go to the mission statement, please. There we are OK. It's overall mission can be summarized in five words. Preserve protect. Restore educate. And enjoy. So that's what we're taking a look at now. The next slide shows. The lands that we put protect. You can see that they stretch quite a ways. We're over 7,200, I'm sorry, 72,000 acres. And we go from the San Francisco Peninsula down to Los Gatos and then from the Bay to Highway 1. Now, how did we get here? Back in 1960s, early 70s, There was a lot of development here in Sunnyvale. And there were a number of people who were resisting that development. And every time something would come up, they would show up at meetings and try and persuade folks not to go that direction. And an editorial in the Palo Alto paper suggested that if they were so concerned about this, why didn't they set up something and go buy the land so they could keep it open? Similar to what was done in East Bay Regional Park. So a small group of committed citizens got together and eventually put a citizen motion on the ballot in 1972. and that ballot won and the district was formed. Sunnyvale was a very strong supporter of that motion and has been a strong supporter of open space ever since. So the next page I'd like to show you a bit about the governance and that is there are seven board members and they are elected separated by wards and you can see the words here each ward represents a little over a hundred thousand people because there are about 700 000 in the whole district sanibel if you look very carefully there and find the little three in the yellow is the smallest of the wards because we have our people more compact. In fact, Sunnyvale is the only ward that doesn't have any open space. Now, if you want to go north a little bit and go over towards where Moffett was, we kind of are right on the edge of what turns out to be kind of the overflow from Moffett Field. So that's the absolute closest. But they're not too far away. So next slide. On the lands we protected, it's hard to see the little detail in there. But what we're looking at is some of those things that we've been able to accomplish. So next slide. I'm just going to run through these. celebrating the 50th anniversary. As we preserved, the preserves, rather, are free and open to everyone 24, not 24 hours a day, good grief, but seven days a week. We have open, 27 open space preserves, But we chose to provide photos of some of them because you can get to them not too far away. So I'd like to go to the next slide, please. And that one is a picture of Parisma Creek Redwoods, which is not far away. And the next one, Rancho San Antonio, is the closest. it's approximately 33 minutes by bicycle so it is also the most heavily not impacted so much as it's used folks pretty close to half of the people who visit the preserves go to rancho but they're not the only one because a little further along next slide is the county ranch. Preserve. After the family who migrated here from Italy. It has 3.7 miles and trails for all kinds of activities, accessible restrooms, good for kids. It's only a little over 3 miles and it's not super hilly. If we go to the next slide, we have Montebello. And it's about an hour, a little over an hour by bicycle. And if you're going up to Windy Hill, you get a bit of a climb. And I see a couple of heads nodding. People have done that. All right. And then the final one was the nature study area, which is about 30 minutes away. It connects to bike path along the edge of the bay and some of the tide pools. And eventually we'll get to our Ravensward preserve, which is out of Palo Alto. Excuse me. Okay. So that's my portion. I'm going to turn it over to my compatriot, and she will discuss some of the programs and project updates. This is just a very brief summary. Karen?

Thank you, Jed. I think one of the things that's really impressive about Midpen, while I get up and running here, is that if you noticed, we're a four to one. We have 250 employees and 1,000 volunteers. That, I think, is the sign of a very successful and well-run, well-managed organization and shows the commitment and dedication that people in the community have to support Midpen, its mission, and its preserves. So, as Jed said, I'll be talking a little bit about our programs and project updates. Next slide. This is, and I apologize it's a little hard to read this, but the essence of this is that the red areas are the areas that have been determined and identified by the state, their criteria, to be areas that we ought to be focusing on in terms of wildfire resiliency. What does that mean? There are a few things that happen with a wildfire resiliency program. it has four prongs and they're around the perimeter of the central image there central circle there which is wildfire resiliency program vegetation management what that primarily does is it focuses on fuel reduction we also have a prescribed fire excuse me a fire prescribed excuse me a prescribed fire plan There's not pollen flowing around in here, is there? And this is controlled intentional burns to manage fuel and improve the ecosystem health. This is one of the things that goes back to our, you know, our natives, Americans. They used to do prescribed burns. And we abandoned that because we thought we knew better. And it turns out we don't know better. Our ecosystem actually needs fires to rejuvenate the ecosystem. um we also have a wildfire fight excuse me wildland i apologize wildland fire uh pre-plan and that's uh involves the and focuses on creating resource advisor maps what this does is in case there is a fire if there is a fire it tells people who are fighting the fires and by the way we do we partner with cal fire and other fire agencies including like City of Palo Alto for instance has its own fire department. So we partner with our local agencies as well as Cal Fire and State Fire to suppress fire when there is an event. So the resource advisory maps, what those do is they tell people where to go and what particular areas to focus on in terms of what resources need to be particularly preserved. cared for and then a monitoring plan which tells us what we've done and what we can do better going forward and next slide please prescribed burns we do have a few in the offing and there are various stages of planning and our intentional burns both in San Mateo and Santa Clara County and next One of the other things that we've been focusing a lot in the recent past and currently and concurrently is our ADA accessibility. Because it's great to have these preserves, and if you're hale and hearty, you know, great to get out there and just climb or bike or, you know, whatever, as much as you can. But we also want to make these preserves available to people who have more limited physical abilities. So we've been focusing a lot more recently on making wider trails, low-grade trails, and easy access paths, and upgrading the parking facility so it can make things more available to people who do have some kind of limitations. And next. One of the things that we did this year was we had a party, and my God, did people come. We did the first ever conservation career fair. And over 800 people came, and they were inquiries from well over 1,000 people. So people were so excited to be able to come and learn about jobs and careers in conservation. It was amazing. Very successful. And next. We also have interpretation and education programs. And these include long-tier docents. I mentioned that we have over 1,000 volunteers. Those include the docents. They provide programming, connect the public throughout the preserves in a variety of different ways, including the next slide. including our docent naturalist program. Both the docent naturalists, which undergo training of over 400 hours, and the docents generally undergo very extensive training. So you're out there with someone who really knows the preserves really, really well, that can speak to the land, speak to the habitat, and speak to the animals that traverse our lands. And next. Partnership programs have become a really central part of our program activities. And what this does is it gives us an opportunity and it gives other organizations an opportunity to partner with Midpen on projects. One of the organizations that we focus with, have worked with a lot, is Latino Outdoors. Because I get to sit on the Midpen board, I also am on the Bay Restoration Authority board. Latino Outdoors is also a critical element of that work. And those two organizations are kind of companion. Obviously, Bay Restoration Authority is along the coast and up and down the peninsula. But these partnership programs are really important to expanding the reach and getting investment of people's interest in our preserve. And next. One of the things that we have been very focused on and very aware of is the critical wildlife linkages. These linkages are interrupted by roadways. Climate change can have an impact on them. If you look at the next slide, This is why the Highway 17 undercrossing is such a critical and huge project. And it's, you know, it takes years. Sometimes we hear people say that we have the projects take so long. This is like so many different jurisdictions are a part of this, that it takes a long time to raise the money and get all the permitting and all that sort of thing. But this is a critically, critically important project. And I can't wait for it to be open. It'll provide access for you know, mountain lions, any number of critters. And one of the things is there will be like a trail guidance for the animals. And that may sound odd, but they learn, animals learn. It's like how to, I'm running out of time here, how to access these trails. The next slide. is the overcrossing in companion with the undercrossing. There's also an overcrossing for pedestrians and for human use. We're doing a little bit better than the animals are about not getting hit on Highway 17. The next slide is critically important. This is the next slide, but I'm going to skip this because of time. This one is rodenticide outreach. i encourage anytime that we speak to any of this the cities it's we need your help we really need your help because rodenticide is uh its reach is incredible because if you look at again a little bit hard to see but if you look at like bobcats and mountain lions their their migration routes are like the the bobcat i think is the yellow area they're kind of in the center but it ranges out and if a bobcat gets in contact with roof rats are around, gets in contact with a roof rat and they devour that roof rat. They carry the poison that that roof rat has been exposed to. They carry that and it causes mange, it causes illness, it causes them to not be able to function as they should as wildlife and they ultimately will die. They ultimately will die. So whatever this city can do, you've looked at a lot of different things, whatever you can do to discourage if not ban the sale of rodenticides in your community it would be a huge huge we lose cats we lose birds we lose all kinds of things because of rodenticides so the next thing that i would encourage you to do is visit a preserve that's the next slide is visit a preserve and one of the things that a couple of you know that this is hot off the press this is our third printing of this preserve guide that talks a lot about all of the preserves each of the preserves and invite you we have Josh was able to pick up a handful. They really just literally came off the press. So your staff has some. If you want more, please let us know. We will get them to you. And lastly, just if we just quickly go through these, Midpen has an events calendar. Go to our website to find out about that. Get in ways to get involved on the next slide. And this is just the next photo is a little bit about you know a part of who we are this is like our 250 member staff and the next last slide is we have no shortage of excellent photographers who visit the preserves as well as our own staff who come and provide us with with images just to kind of like tease us all about like get out here come see this for yourself so we're uh we're here we're glad to be here thank you for the invitation and we're here also to answer any questions you might have

Thank you very much. Let's go to Council questions. First up is Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. This is actually a question for city manager, city attorney. Do we have any laws on the books regarding rodenticide?

Don't believe we do, but I could check.

Thank you. That might. I don't know if there are other jurors and this is a question for Midpen. Are there other jurisdictions in the region that have laws on the books regarding rodenticide?

I don't know exactly what the rules are between city to city. I know every place that we speak and have outreach, we advocate for that. We certainly, by our own practices, have pretty, we almost don't use it at all in some very, very limited and focused points. So we have done our part and we're asking other cities to do the same thing. And I appreciate, I appreciate the question.

Any model ordinances or policies that you could share would certainly be helpful for that. Thank you. No further questions.

I think Josh may have an answer.

Yeah, I'm trying to remember if there are specific jurisdictions. I believe there might be some down in Southern California. Santa Barbara comes to mind. But there's a great website, RAPTORS are the solution. And they certainly promote alternatives to using rodenticides. And I believe they also reference uh the legal aspect of you know banning rodenticides i know we've worked at the state level there have been several pieces of legislation to ban the use of second generation anticoagulant rodenticides which are particularly vicious when it comes to affecting predators but at the local level yeah we'll need to do some research thank you next up is councilmember cisneros

thank you all for being here and for the work that you do to make this a wonderful place to live um i really appreciated hearing the origin story and thinking about how there was so much growth going on wanting to preserve what makes this an attractive place to come and live once you build places for for folks to live and these parks have been part of my life ever since i can ever remember and I enjoy sharing them with my children. So it's very appreciated. I know there are generations out there that appreciate it as well. I do have a couple of clarifying questions. The fire map, this is so important. It's all top of mind and we kind of forget that it could be right in our backyard when it's terrible fires. And so thank you for your vigilance in protecting us there. It says that it's effective April 1st, 2024. Is that the last time that this map was updated and Also, how often is that not updated along with the plans? Do you have the dates?

uh yes the um and the map was the prior version of that map was 2007. um yeah the board of forestry and cal fire worked together to create these maps these are the fire hazard severity zone maps so the pink and the pink areas were the state responsibility areas the darker red areas were actually the local responsibility areas the more urbanized areas and the models are becoming much more sophisticated, there is a push to get them regularly updated to reflect on the ground conditions.

Right. Climate change is moving real fast.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

We, you know, struggle to keep up as it is. And I think that that's wonderful that we're looking at taking advantage of that modeling. How do you keep people out of the under crossings and over crossings?

Short answer, we don't. I mean, we will put up signage. We'll try to discourage it as much as possible. But the under crossings, if you were to visit one of these, they're in a fairly inaccessible place. But with that said, teenagers can get into all kinds of things. There's actually the existing one that San Jose Water maintains that we're replacing with this is riddled with crossings. graffiti gang tags and whatnot. Generally, the animals cross at night, typically when people aren't around. So we're hoping that the net result is that you'll get a functional crossing.

And do you have trail cams set up to monitor these?

We do and we will. We were monitoring animals as they approach currently and then generally turn away. Sometimes they're successful crossing. Sometimes you'll get them cross several times. They'll cross several times and then they get hit. This project is particularly important for mountain lions here because back in February, the California Fish and Game Commission designated mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act. It's a particularly big deal and mountain lions are getting killed here. We lose about one or two a year. We have 50 to 60 mountain lions on the peninsula. There's a lot of inbreeding as a result of that isolation, that genetic isolation. So the effective population is about 16 actually. So we're hoping to increase that genetic exchange.

If you want to know more about that too, if you know about the mountain lion P22, it's a really heart-wrenching story. P22 mountain lion got isolated from, had no way to migrate, so got isolated, ended up getting very ill and ultimately just, you know, has passed away. But P22 is a mountain lion that was tracked and followed for a long time, and he was trapped. So these undercrossings and ways for them to get to, continuing their gene pool. is just critically, critically important. And to your question, which is a good one, how do you keep people out? Josh is correct. Like we don't specifically, but that's also a part of education. So anything that you all can do in terms of educating your children or educating the community, or when you go on hikes, you know, make it, make it aware that like, we're probably not going to scare away animals from using the under crossings. Cause as Josh said, they go at night, but it's still like best to just leave them be just leave them be. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh yeah, it's a really wonderful and important work and thank you very much for taking on a complicated but critical task, so thank you.

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

I thank you for your presentation, and I actually got my start in advocacy related to elevating the pollution from the Lehigh Cement Plant, which is right next to Rancho San Antonio Park. We're familiar. Yeah. Through the years, Midpen has been a strong advocate. And without Midpen, that issue probably would have died. So I just want to thank you for your courage and your determination And you're persistent with that. And now we have a beautiful park still, Rancho San Antonio. So with the Lehigh cement plant, the redevelopment, does that impact Rancho San Antonio? Or do you have any oversight of that or what they're doing? Do they comply? Is the situation better?

Excuse me. We've been involved over quite a bit of time with the the cement plant and then the pit. And we're in discussion in terms of how to refill the pit and with what kind of material. So we're involved with that. The ownership of the cement works and so forth wasn't local, but we have been collaborating with them urging them to go this way and that way. And trails over the property have been used. Partly because that was very visible from Rancho San Antonio. So it's of significant concern to us. And we have been working over the years to help them see the light.

That's great. And I remember at one point, the county oversaw them, but MidPenn took it upon yourself to say, pass them whatever, that said that both the county and MidPenn have the Right.

Jurisdiction, yes.

Yeah, jurisdiction to oversee Lehigh. So if one wasn't doing it, then the other one would step up and do it. So I thought.

And there's been a good cooperation between the two organizations for quite some time.

Yeah. So thank you for your many years of service to the community and protecting our preserves. for generations to come. So thank you for your work.

Thank you.

I would just add just real quick. Yeah. And that's oversight of the ridgeline that separates it. Our jurisdiction doesn't extend into the... Quarry itself that were heavily monitoring the situation and for others who do want to get a timely update about the status of it. Supervisor Margaret Abby Koga just sent out a notice about a an update that she'll be providing on September 30th. It's I believe it's an online event.

OK, thank you so much.

Yeah.

And just lastly, I appreciate the recognition that you're giving to Midpen, but this closure of the quarry would not have happened without the advocacy and the diligence of then-supervisor Joseph Midian. He was critical and hugely central to this, so hats off to him.

Thank you. Next up is Councilmember Lay.

Thank you so much. I don't think you touched on this in your presentation, but I wanted to thank you specifically for the work that you do around Rancho and specifically Deer Hollow Farm for the students in Sunnyvale, many of whom attend Title I schools. Each of the schools in Sunnyvale north of El Camino is Title I eligible. This is their first field trip. It was my son's first field trip, twice actually, once. in TK and then once again in K that he had to do virtually. And it was very interesting to see how you adapt to virtual TK field trip to Deer Hollow. So that was very fun. But thanks so much. I think that's the first experience that some kids get hiking, some kids get out in nature, some kids, especially by the time they hit third grade, learning about the Ohlone that exhibit there. It's a very well thought out program. And thank you for the work that you do.

Thank you, Councilmember. Next up is Councilmember Chang.

Thank you for the presentation and the program updates. I was curious if you have a breakdown of by city population, the use of the preserves, especially for a city like ours where the preserves aren't specifically in Sunnyvale. You might not have that number on hand.

I'm sorry.

Could you restate that? You want to know what's the breakdown of the preserve use by city or by population? You know, I don't know that we do.

As far as it's our highest usage preserve, we get over a million visitors per year at Rancho.

It's the most popular. It's 4,000 acres, 165 acre. Rancho San Antonio County Park operates in partnership with Santa Clara County Parks and Rec Department. So we manage it.

The other part I would mention is that we do usage statistics, just trail counters and so forth. We do occasionally do license plate reader-based monitoring. We did that with our Purissima Creek Redwood Preserve up in San Mateo County near Half Moon Bay. That's our second most popular preserve. It gets about 200,000 visitors a year. We were seeing visitors as far away as the Central Valley and the North Bay visiting. It truly is a regional amenity, but the heaviest usage, of course, are the communities directly adjacent to that, in that case, Parisima. I don't think we've done a survey like that for Rancho.

I think I would just be curious, you know, if people move into the city or the nearby locations, how they might hear about these opportunities to go and use the preserves or how outreach that NDPEN does to provide this information to people that live in the area.

Thank you for that. And one follow-up, too, is that it was mentioned about the children and going to a hidden... Yeah, I always get that mixed up with the San Jose farm. During COVID, it's like people realized that they needed to get their feet on the ground. They needed to be in nature. They needed to have some relief from the stress of being cooped up in their homes and not being able to visit with each other and stuff. And our visitation, my memory's gotten a little foggy, and our visitation went up something like 40%. Oh, during COVID? During COVID. It almost doubled. It almost doubled during COVID. So the value of these preserves is... It shines and shows up especially at times of stress and times of recognized need. But they're there all the time for people to enjoy. As Jed said, they're open 365 days a year, free of charge to everyone. And Rancho is our most visited. Purisima is the next visited. I encourage you to visit the other preserves. Please use the visitor guide because we want to spread out the enjoyment and relieve a little bit of the stress from some of the most visited.

Thank you. I have a follow-up question more about wildlife and issues because we talked about rodenticide. So there's an increasing issue with rabies in bats. So how do you all track kind of, you know, issues that come up?

I think primarily through partnerships with California Department of Fish and Wildlife. If we find an effective bat, we'll collect it and send it off to the labs. But we're not purposely going out looking for bats with rabies. We do have several installations at our Red Barn structure on Highway 84 near La Honda. has been, for all intents and purposes, turned into a giant bat cave. Same at Bear Creek Redwoods. We build bat structures because we recognize the ecological significance and importance of bats. And we monitor their health.

They eat, what, three times their weight every night, something like that? So a lot of insects are taken care of. I just wanted to, one brief thing. Just to give you an example, there's one trail we have, we have several trails like this, that's a little over a mile. And in that mile you go through four zones.

Grasshopper loop.

Yeah, the Grasshopper Loop Trail. It's a very short trail. It's basically pretty level. You got grasslands, you got oak woodlands, you got redwoods. So that all of that experience, if you want to bring your child along, hold their hand and walk them for a mile and a half, it's pretty, pretty powerful.

Thank you. That's all my question.

Thank you. Next up is Council Member Srinivasan.

Thanks for all the work you do. Thank you. You talked about wildlife trials, right, for them to go through. My question is, I know there is also Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. Do you guys work together or how does the trail

continue there we work together with a lot of the organizations that we abut and there are trails that go through from one to another uh centers that the authority got formulated 10 years after we did, I think. I didn't specify our boundaries. Currently, our boundary is from Lawrence to Mary 101 to 280. So it's very, very compact. But some trails that are regional trails like the um san francisco bay trail is one and then um along the ridge line bay area ridge trail is keeps getting new sections added so it gets more and more complete and that goes from jurisdiction to jurisdiction you know so the integration of of different organizations the cooperation is really a very strong suit in our region.

I would also just add that certainly cooperation on things like trails, but almost every facet of our work is a collaboration because no land management agency is an island. They're all intertwined. And then on top of that, wildlife don't recognize borders. So when you're looking at things like critical linkages, the work, like the Open Space Authority has done a lot of work to protect the lands of Coyote Valley, which is a recognized critical linkage between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo Range. So our project at Highway 17 has a direct impact on the health of that linkage, on providing climate resilience, the genetic diversity I spoke about earlier, all of these things. If you were to look at wildfire, for instance, we have a tremendous collaboration in the Los Gatos watershed right above the town of Los Gatos of, I believe, six organizations doing vegetation management to reduce the fuel load and increase the safety. um one thing i will say that distinguishes us from a lot of the other agencies is that biodiversity is biodiversity comes first so any any practices we do even the what the vegetation management for for public safety is done in a way that enhances biodiversity whether it's through the reduction of invasive plants in a sustainable way or architecting the vegetation management so wildlife can continue to move across the landscape as opposed to one that's denuded of all vegetation, which makes it very challenging for them to expose themselves. So there's a lot of thinking and a lot of science that goes into the way we approach these issues.

Thank you very much.

Those are my questions. Just one little addition to that, just to get you something else to chew on, no pun intended here. But one thing that I didn't mention when we were talking about wildfire management and suppression and land use management when it comes to fire suppression is our conservation grazing program out on the coast. Because cattle will eat down to where It does promote, you know, the younger, smaller plants will come up when the cattle eat down to that level. And we do rotate the grazing program so that we aren't overgrazing any area. And just to touch on that about the migration, then also it has to do with our migration-friendly fencing that we also employ everywhere.

Thank you.

thank you and i'll just say um thank you for preserving and continuing to expand what mid peninsula open space trust has been doing you know i i attended at least one of the openings with at mount um and you know it's just amazing to see as you continue to to preserve as well as expand you know accessibility and kind of what you're focused on now is even making the trails more accessible depending upon what people's abilities are. So thank you. And of course, Jed, I just want to thank you for 30 years of service with Midpen. It is amazing to see how it's grown, how Midpen has really changed over those 30 years. And going back to its inception, it's really a blessing that we have Midpen basically Open Space Trust looking at how we make sure that accessibility and preservation for these areas and reclamation when you start talking about Mount Umunum to ultimately open this up to the ever increasing number of residents that we have here in the Valley. So thank you.

Thank you.

That was all. Oh, Vice Mayor Mellinger.

I was just going to ask if we could have a quick recess after this item.

Yes, we will. With that, I'll go ahead and open up public comment on this item. You can probably just stay there. Please submit a speaker card to the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. I have no speaker cards in the room. City Clerk, are there any remote speakers wishing to speak on the side? No, Mayor. I will go ahead and close public comment. And I'll say again, thank you for coming here tonight. Thank you for updating us. And sorry, we got to it a little bit later than we were hoping to. But it's really impressive to see what you're doing for our region. And thank you for your service. Thank you for all the volunteers that make a difference here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good evening. And with that, we will take a five minute recess and come back at 10.15 p.m. Thank you. Let's go ahead and reconvene and move on to our general business. Our one item is item 26-0423, hold a tax equity and fiscal responsibility act hearing and adopt a resolution related to the proposed issuance of tax exempt bonds for development of 123 unit affordable rental housing project at 245 West Waddell Drive in Sunnyvale. Is there a staff report?

Yes, there is. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members. I'm Ryan Dyson, Housing Specialist 2, and tonight we'll be holding a Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, or TEFRA, hearing for the 245 Waddell Affordable Housing Project. So TEFRA, Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, requires a public hearing for any issuance of tax exempt bonds, which in this case have been awarded to the 245 Waddell Affordable Housing Project here in Sunnyvale. The hearing must take place in the jurisdiction where the project is located and a resolution must be adopted to approve the issuance of the tax exempt bonds. A public notice was published in the Sunnyvale Sun on September 4th in compliance with TEFR requirements. A little about the 245 Waddell development. The 245 Waddell project itself is a planned 123 unit affordable housing project being developed by the Santa Clara County Housing Authority. There is an existing 62 unit project on the site that some of you may know as Orchard Gardens. The affordable housing developer and owner of that project, First Community Housing, currently owns the project, but the Housing Authority will take over ownership and operations with the redevelopment of the project. The Housing Authority will rehabilitate a portion of the projects, demolish another part of the project, and essentially double the size of the projects with a new build on the site from 62 units to 123 units. 121 of those units will be affordable, and 31 of those units will be permanent supportive housing units. The project will meet all federal relocation requirements for any project receiving federal funds. This means financial assistance with rent and moving expenses for the current residents, technical assistance with finding a comparable unit, and households will be able to return to their unit or a comparable unit or offered first right of refusal to return to the project with no increased rent except for the allowable annual rent increases. The city has previously committed financial support to the 245 Waddell project. That includes $10 million in housing mitigation funds, which were awarded in 2020 and 2022. The project has been entitled for quite some time now. I think it was entitled in 2022 and is now nearing approval for its building permit. With the award of tax credits and tax exempt bonds, the project is now fully financed and is working towards a construction start in November of this year. The 245 Waddell project received an award of tax exempt bonds in May of this year, up to $70 million. That's awarded by the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee, or SIDLAC. Those bonds are then issued by the California Municipal Finance Authority, or CMFA, which is a joint powers authority which the city is a member of. The bond proceeds are then loaned to the housing authority for the financing of the project. But that bond debt is the sole responsibility of the housing authority and not the responsibility of the cities. So for the city, there is no fiscal impact for this decision tonight. There's no financial or legal obligations for the city to pay the debt, and the city bears no cost in the issuance of the debt. And the city will actually receive a portion of the bond issuance fee, which would be up to $20,000. For the project, this is a critical step that's tough for hearing. Like most new affordable housing projects in California, this project relies on some combination of city, county, and federal funds, along with low-income housing tax credits and tax-exempt bonds. And so these are awarded by the state, and they're the largest single source of gap financing for the project. So adoption of the ordinance tonight and approving the issuance of bonds will truly enable this affordable housing project to move forward. So staff recommends approving alternative one, uh, which you can see here on the slide, uh, to conduct the public hearing, uh, pursuant to the Tefer act and adopt the resolution. And, uh, we'll be available for any questions, uh, and along with representatives of the housing authority, who's joining us remotely. We have Serena Lee and CMFA. We have Jared Suzuki here tonight, uh, in council chambers and thank you. And, uh, we'll available. We'll be available for any questions.

thank you let's go to council member questions first up is vice mayor mellinger thank you very much so just to clarify essentially there is no financial impact no measurable financial impact on the city from the issuance of these bonds um it is just a quirk of the law that we are required to hold this hearing

that is correct the the award has already been made by the state uh the city or the county in this case could have held the the hearing tonight but the the city was the one to take on this so no fiscal impact for the city okay thank you no further questions thank you Vice Mayor next up is Councilmember Serena Boston yeah two questions uh City paid uh 10 million dollars so far right We have committed $10 million to the project. That has not been loaned to the project.

Oh, it's not loaned yet.

Okay.

So what is that for?

That's for the redevelopment of the project. uh so there is a current project that's on the site right now and but it will be significantly significantly redeveloped and doubled in size so the city's funds are contributing to the development costs related to that rehabilitation and new construction okay thank you and then the developer is county housing authority

Who will be eligible to go into these units? Is that the entire county or Sunnyvale resident or people who work in Sunnyvale or how does that work?

So some of the units, being a project that's led by the Santa Clara County Housing Authority, some of the projects will have project-based vouchers attached to them, although not all of the units. So those units will be eligible for anyone that is currently enrolled with the housing authority. The remainder of the units, there are 31 permanent supportive housing units. Those would be referred by the county's coordinated entry system.

and then the remainder of the units would be subject to the the city's uh lip work preference okay and then uh the there are existing 31 no uh 61 affordable units right so what happens to the tenants will they be accommodated in the new building or uh

That's right. Depending on where the tenants live right now, a portion of the project will be redeveloped. All of those tenants will be temporarily relocated and then offered the same unit or a comparable unit. They'll be provided financial assistance for the time of the temporary relocation. And then for the tenants that are part of the building that is going to be demolished and rebuilt, those tenants will be permanently relocated. So it's going to take a while for that new construction to take place, about two years. So those tenants will be offered permanent relocation benefits, including additional relocation, financial assistance, technical assistance with finding a new unit. And they'll also be given first right of refusal to return to the development once it's complete.

very good so that is uh so the housing authority will take care of those things yes that is their responsibility correct okay thank you very much thank you council member next up is council member cisneros

Yes, thank you, thank you for this presentation and it's exciting to see this going forward and to be able to check the box off here for something. This is an easy part, this is probably like our job right now is probably the easiest part of this whole project and. When we're talking for the relocation, when we talk about a comparable unit, how comparable are we talking about? Are we going to be asking people to move to Stockton or is this going to be within a certain range and some limits on that?

For the tenants that are being temporarily relocated, they'll be offered a unit, a comparable unit in the project. So not asking them to relocate to anywhere else, they'll be offered a unit in the project itself.

Okay. And then the permanent real, I guess I'm talking about the permanent relocation assistance, I suppose you could call it that it was how you mentioned help with moving help with rent. I just want some details about like, if there are parameters.

Correct. I know that relocation specialists generally look in the regional area. But we do have Serena Lee from the Housing Authority on online, I believe, who may be able to provide some more information about that.

Is there somebody on the line that we're waiting for? That is okay. Perhaps they can come back and answer that if they read during the meeting. And okay. All right, that answered my last question. And so what are the current affordability levels? Like what's the breakdown? And then what will it be? I know that we have that addition of permanent supportive housing.

Right. I have the current affordability levels with me right now, and it's primarily 30% AMI. A large portion of the units will be 30% AMI. One moment. So currently, the new project will have 60 units at 30% AMI, 18 units at 50% AMI, 37 units at 60% AMI, and then six units at 80% AMI. So it does target very deep affordability levels. And then if you give me one moment, I can get you the current statistics for the project.

Yeah.

So currently on site there are 12 units at 30% AMI, 45 units at 50% AMI, and that would be all of the units there.

Great. Oh, and real quick, so you mentioned first right of refusal to come back.

Right.

Right. Would they need to requalify under the new affordability levels or under the affordability level that they left?

Tenants will need to meet the affordability restrictions of the project, so they would have to be below the 80% AMI in order to be given first right of refusal back to the project.

Okay. All right. Great. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Next up is Councilmember Lay.

Thank you. What is the unit composition, the bedrooms, how many, what's the percentage of each of those?

So we have four studios, 76 one bedrooms, 29 two bedrooms, and 14 three bedrooms.

14.

Sorry, can you say those last two again? 29 two-bedrooms and 14 three-bedrooms.

Okay, thank you. And then what will the parking situation be? Is there going to be a parking lot or street parking or a garage?

Yes, there's 31 existing parking spaces. Those will remain there, and there will be 59 new spaces and a podium structure, so 90 parking spaces total.

Okay, thank you.

That's all.

Thank you. Next up is Councilmember Sell.

um okay so thank you for the presentation and um it says estimated construction start is November 2026. so um uh financing of this to get the 70 million um it doesn't um the start date doesn't it's not contingent in any way because that seems like really close or

Right. The construction will start in November. The project was awarded tax credits in May of this year, and they're given 180 days to close on construction financing. So that brings us to November. So they have to close on all of their construction financing, including the city's loans, all the other loans to the project, and then they'll be able to start construction right after that.

Okay, so this is just the last portion of it, and there's absolutely no risk, and it's just a formality.

Yeah, I don't know if I would say it's exactly a formality, but the Texas exempt bonds have already been awarded to the project by the state. So in a sense, we're holding a hearing to approve their issuance.

Okay.

Council, if I can just jump in, I just want to clarify, I don't think it's a formality. This is a process that we have to go through. And the primary focus of the action tonight is to just conduct a public hearing to enable the financing. So I appreciate all the detailed questions about what the project serves in, et cetera. The primary goal for tonight is to just conduct a public hearing and get the public an opportunity to speak on the financing portion.

Mm-hmm. Okay. And so... So it says the city has no responsibility for the debt. It's all the Santa Clara County Housing Authority. And so great job. So thank you. Keep working on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Next up is Councilmember Chang.

Thank you. With this current timeline of after we conduct this hearing, are the residents aware of the potential construction starting in November, particularly for the 32 unit building that's going to be demolished? Moving might be a bit of an issue.

Yes, the Housing Authority has been working with the residents to notify them according to all the federal requirements, which I believe have at least a 90-day warning of relocation. So residents have been informed, and they're actively working with the residents right now to relocate them and find them comparable units.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Burleigh.

I think that was actually my question. Thank you.

Okay. And so I'm happy to see this project coming forward. It's been transitioned from one nonprofit developer I think was community housing to the county, which great. I'm glad to see, you know, Measure A funds being put to use here in Sunnyvale. As far as community outreach, not to the neighbors, not to the community that's part of the current Orchard Gardens, but this project has been on the books for many years now, as far as the tower replacing basically one wing of the current development. Has any additional outreach happened in that neighborhood, in that community, to kind of update them? In six years, let's say, when that was first kind of put out there, the communities changed. People have moved in. People have moved out. Just trying to get a better idea on what we've done from a city standpoint. I know it's not specific to the approval of this financing tonight. I want to see the housing go forward. But what have we done in the interim as this project has kind of stalled and then restarted?

Yeah, I think that it would be great to check in with the Housing Authority and ask them to do some additional outreach prior to the construction of the project beginning. I think there's some time for that, and we can alert the nearby residents that construction is about to take place.

Okay, and so I think, you know, as much as I'm happy that this is the last tranche of financing, because this is always the issue, you know, sitting on Measure A, Oversight Committee, there's a multitude of projects that have partial financing, waiting for tax credits, all those different things. And if this is what's getting us over the border, over the goal line and to construction, I'm happy to see that we're finally at that point. But I do think that it's just being a good neighbor at this point to raise the awareness of what's coming, only surprisingly two months two months away um which i think will be you know it's good to see that project moving forward but conceivably the backlash that that our council um and conceivably you know our res our our staff might get um it's just it was just something that we need to look at so thank you that looks like all the questions from council Council Member Lay.

Sorry, to piggyback on the Mayor's comments about the outreach to the community, could you specify again what the Housing Authority might be able to do between now and November is the start date, right? And do you know what already has been done?

I would have to check in with the Housing Authority to see if they have notified surrounding community members. There had been a lot of outreach done initially for the planning entitlement phase of this project, but as the mayor mentioned, that did happen some time ago. So I think that the Housing Authority can certainly reach out to surrounding property owners, surrounding residents, and give them a notice as to what's being planned. And I think that also... They can provide a schedule of construction that is going to be better than anything that we would have had recently, too. So it will help people be informed of what to expect in the near future.

Could I get an historical overview of this project? Because it was first put on this council's radar before I took office offline with staff.

It can get you a timeline.

Yeah, I can. When we check in informally, you know, as a regular, I think I can share that.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. That's all council questions. Let me go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. Please submit a speaker card at the city clerk. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on your telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. I have no speaker cards in the room. City Clerk, do we have any remote speakers wishing to speak on this item? No, Mayor. I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to Council for final questions or a motion. Vice Mayor Mellinger.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I move Alternative 1, Staff Recommendation.

Thank you. Council Member Lay.

Second.

To your motion.

As the city manager pointed out, this is really a formality regarding the financing of the project. It's very clear that this is going to have no negative impact on the city budget. Therefore, I urge my colleagues I vote to digress very slightly. It's great that we're doubling the amount of affordable housing at this complex, and I very much look forward to seeing that. Thank you.

thank you and i'll be supporting this motion uh definitely this is something that i've been waiting to see happen for a long time so the groundbreaking is actually a great step forward uh for for this project seeing you know it move from one developer to another and finally getting to the point where it's at the final funding is just a fantastic point and you know for us this is no risk no real risk to the city the only upside the real upside is having you know new affordable housing so so happy to support this motion with that city clerk can you please conduct the vote The motion carries 7-0. Thank you. With that, next are councilmember reports on activities from intergovernmental committee assignments. Are there any? Councilmember Sreenivasan.

yeah i attended the silicon valley clean energy board of directors meeting there were three items one was a stop budget that is the calendar the fiscal year is moving from september to january so this year there is just three months of budget And then there was a discussion on the cybersecurity of the infrastructure of SVC. And then also people utilizing our city's residents utilizing different programs. So thank you.

Thank you. And thank you for sitting in on that meeting for me. Council Member Cisneros.

Yes, thank you. I attended the Legislative Action Committee in Charles Eastead as the alternate this past week, and it was primarily regarding going over the ballot propositions with the California League or the League of Women Voters and it was a very informative unbiased wonderful presentation about how to understand public policy. And I really encourage all residents to take a look at the presentation that they have put together for, um, for the state in all chapters. And then of course, um, my colleagues too, it's really important to know, I know we'll be discussing, uh, all of those at an upcoming meeting, but as a, Good way to prepare. I really enjoyed that. And then I wanted to also share that. We discussed the lobby update, the different bills that the league is supporting or opposing our particular one, and that the governor has another, you know, another couple of days until the 30th to sign bills. So if there are any bills that still do not have a signature and you are interested in either him doing or not doing that, you can email your letters to leg.unit at gov.ca.gov. And that would be the best way to get your input in there last minute as those are making their way across the desk. That's all I have.

Thank you. Next up is Council Member Sell.

Okay. So I attended the Cities Association of Santa Clara County as Mayor Klein's alternate, and it was a really interesting presentation. It was the Silicon Valley Regional Interoperability Authority, which make sure that all the radios and the government radios all work together and so they mentioned that many years ago they invested 100 million into the system so thousands of radios all over our region can talk to each other and that was put to test with super bowl and fifa so they said like thousands like i think 3 000 radios were on and being used different government agency and it all worked and that they have so much capacity that they could have handled like 3 000 more so it's a really well-built system it's financially there's very little staff so they're very conservative with their funding and in the next few years they will need to upgrade the system But they're going to do it very conservatively. They're not going to like revamp the whole system. That would be like on the order of 300 million. They're just going to stay with the current system and change out parts of it. So they seem like they're very well managed. The other thing is I attended the VTA board meeting and they released their letter in response to the grand jury report. So I'll get that to the city clerk so that they can get to the council members mostly. A lot of things that was brought up was that there needs to be more clarity. So that will, the VJ agreed to do that, which is good. So it was, although it's a grand jury report, it led to good outcomes. and um i think that's about it so thank you thank you thanks for the update uh councilmember lay

Thank you. I attended the VTA Policy Advisory Committee. I don't know if you've gotten the approval yet, but Linda, Councilman Purcell, but we voted to approve the transit service plan for the new year. I think the highlights are the service being rerouted around San Jose-Tiradon and Mountain View. Otherwise, the bus routes are

um held as more or less consistent um the uh and then we'll see what comes with the november bond measure to see further changes with vta service plan thank you thank you and that's all the comments from council um next up are non-agenda items and comments council council of serena council member sreenivasan

Thank you, Mayor. I have two announcements. One is I want to briefly extend my deepest sympathies to those impacted by devastating floods in Nepal. With many of our residents, having close ties to the region this international tragedy is felt locally my thoughts are with the grieving families and displaced communities and hope for a swift recovery in days ahead thank you second thank you and thank you for you and council member cell for attending the vigil last week um next up is council council member cell

Yeah, I just wanted to say that it was, I attended the vigil and they showed scenes and videos from the flood and the glacier going through and the flood being created and it's very devastating. So I know that the community is very worried and hurt and all of that and I just,

which them all um my sympathies and that they will be able to recover from this hopefully thank you council member sal yeah i've talked to to multiple members of our nepalese community here in sunnyvale and definitely there's lots of lots of thoughts going back to um back to their country um next up is council member cisneros Okay.

I have one more.

Oh, Council Member Srinivasan.

So this is congratulations, Mayor Klein, for completing 10 years on the council.

thank you for that yes um this past weekend was 10 years since i was first sworn in and it's been an interesting journey to say the least uh but it but you know ultimately looking back it's been kind of interesting but i just want to thank you and i want to thank all the council members and city staff that i've worked with over the last 10 years it has been an interesting path. But thinking back 10 years ago, being in a different building, looking at photos of how much gray hair 10 years has put on me is a little surprising also. But thank you for that. Thank you for acknowledging that. It's been good to see how the city's changed, I think, in a very positive way over the last decade. So thank you. um city manager do you have any non-agent items or comments tonight thank you okay i will see everyone here right early on saturday morning this meeting is adjourned at 10 48 p.m thanks to everyone who participated have a good evening