City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening, everybody. I'm Mayor Erica A. Stewart, and I'm here to say that four of us are here. Council Member Shoreson will be here later today. And with that, I will pass it over to Vice Mayor Francis for the Pledge of Allegiance. Well, today we don't have any proclamations or presentations or anything. So we're going to just jump right into the city manager report. City manager.

Great.

Thank you.

I do have actually a number of slides, so it's great to have a little bit of time here. A lot of important and fun things to highlight. We'll start off with some really good news, certainly from my perspective, and I believe a lot of people on our team and in the community. I'm happy to share that I have appointed Randy Harris as our Fire Chief, effective June 18th, 2026. Okay, light, yes. He is conveniently sitting in the very deepest corner of the room right now. You will be seeing him actually at our first meeting in July for a formal swearing in. And so we'll be happy to do that at that point. Randy has served us as our interim fire chief since January twenty twenty six and has now agreed to take on this incredibly important leadership role here in San Luis Obispo. While we did conduct a national search, no candidate was appointed through that process, and Randy stepped forward at that point and agreed to stay on. We're incredibly grateful. He did the very remarkable thing and will be unretiring in order to stay on with us here in San Luis Obispo, and so we're really grateful for his leadership and what he has shown us already. He's a trusted, experienced fire service leader with more than 30 years of service in SLO County. He's focused on developing our internal leadership and strengthening relationships across our organization and throughout our community. If you've met him and talked with him, you will know that he is driven by a deep sense of public service and commitment to our community he definitely recognizes a number of critical needs we have coming up and will be helping us through those including opening a new fire station so not a lot of i think chiefs can do that in a career and he gets to do that pretty quickly onboarding nine firefighters for that new fire station and helping us fill a number of additional vacancies through the end of this year. Again, he'll be sworn in formally. And thank you all for that very warm welcome. And we look forward to his leadership in the coming years. So thanks so much. Next up, we want to highlight that tomorrow morning is our bike breakfast being held at our Fire Station 1. As they do most years during Bike Month, the Fire Department is hosting this bike breakfast in honor of Bike Month. So stop by Station 1 for free pancakes and coffee between the hours of 7 and 8.30 a.m. Next, we have a couple of exciting things going on at slow transit. And so I want to make sure to highlight those here. First is we have a new tap to ride system. So I'll explain what that means. On May 4, slow transit and the RTA launched a new contactless fare payment system called tap to ride. So this allows riders to pay by simply tapping a credit or debit card or your mobile wallet on your phone when you're boarding the bus. It tracks your taps and automatically applies your daily and monthly fare cabs. So in other words, if you already pay for your monthly fares, it will automatically know that. And so you never pay more than the cost of a pass. In addition, it connects to our state's benefits portals and offers a streamlined process for seniors and Medicare cardholders to receive discounted fares. It's an added convenience and does not replace any of our existing payment options, but instead just removes a barrier for those needing for anyone purchasing any removing the need to purchase a pass up front. So we're really excited about this. It took us some time getting it up and running. The ability for it to translate between RTA and our bus system is another added benefit. We are preparing for a broader promotion of the system in coordination with RTA, so folks should be seeing it out there and then hopefully get familiar with it over the coming months. We are also introducing a new partnership with Transit App, which will provide more reliable real-time bus tracking. It's an app that you would download on your phone. We actually no longer support the slow transit mobile app. It's being continued because it doesn't support real-time tracking. And so after receiving some initial public feedback, we've partnered with Transit App to offer premium features to slow transit users at no cost. This means any paywalls in the app have been removed, and additional premium features such as Slow Transit branding, so you'll be able to recognize it better, will be added soon. It encourages riders to, we encourage riders to download the app for route planning and live bus tracking, but if you don't prefer the app, the same real-time information is available live on our map at slowtransit.org. Over the past month, nearly 1,000 unique users have already accessed this app each week, generating more than 15,000 app opens. There will be additional promotions planned for June once we have all the features live. So we're really excited to be rolling these tools out to our community. Next up, we have our National Public Works and Utilities Week will be occurring, it is occurring this week, May 17th through the 23rd. It is celebrated each year during the third full week of May to recognize the people who help maintain and improve our essential public services like streets, water, sanitation, parking, and transit. This year's theme is Rooted in Service, Powered by Community. And I think that actually, is very well stated for San Luis Obispo. So please join our Public Works and Utilities staff and a number of other agencies at our farmers market this week on Thursday, May 21st to celebrate our National Public Works and Utilities Week and learn more about our services that keep the community running and moving. And of course, we'll have fun equipment out there for folks to see. and so people can get some hands-on looks at things that help do the work of keeping our city moving. Next May is National Water Safety Month. So our Parks and Rec Department aquatic staff have developed a comprehensive educational page for this water safety month called the Water Safety Hub and it contains a variety of educational and interactive waters safety tips and resources. The web page includes videos and descriptions on what we can do as parents, family members to ensure our children as well as ourselves are prepared around swimming pools, as well as information related to waterfront areas like beaches and lakes. There's easy to follow educational items such as the ABCs of water safety on and how to be a water watcher, and these are available within the Water Safety Hub webpage. So please go to slowswimcenter.org if you want to take a look at that information. You can always call our Slow Swim Center as well at 805-781-7288 if you just have any questions about anything you've seen or anything else you would like to recommend. May is also Building Safety Month, which is a month used to celebrate and raise awareness about building safety. In San Luis Obispo, our building and safety team in our community development department is busy every day working to ensure the safety of buildings in our community through plan review, inspections, answering questions at our front counter, and code enforcement. Just a little snippet of what that looks like in numbers. Last year, our team completed 7,700 building inspections, reviewed more than 1,000 plan check applications, and investigated 1,300 code enforcement complaints. That's a lot of work done really, again, to make sure that our buildings are safe for all of us to be in and use. Really want to thank our building and safety team for all of their hard work they do in our community every day. We are also excited to highlight how the city, through our Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, will be honoring and celebrating Pride Month in our community during the month of June. At our June 2nd meeting, a city proclamation recognizing the month as Pride Month will be read and accepted by Tobin Johnson with the NAACP LGBT btqia plus committee and we're really excited to recognize this important observance once again our office of dei will also continue highlighting pride month in our upcoming edition of our city staff newsletter which will be sent out actually in july it includes pride month's origins and historical importance and a lot of information we'll be excited to share with our team Additionally, our office of DEI will host a booth at Pride in the Plaza on June 27th and Trans Pride in the Park on June 28th. And we know there are a lot of many other events occurring in the community. We hope folks go out and check them out and help support Pride Month. So please keep an eye out for those. We wanted to make sure people were aware of what the city is doing and what we're involved in out of the gate. Next, we just have highlights of what we have coming up at our next meetings. We're in the first of a series of three meetings in a row. And so our next meeting is actually next Tuesday, May 26. It is a special meeting that will be a study session to discuss code enforcement priorities, including safe and livable neighborhoods and housing priorities. Then June 2nd, we have quite a full consent agenda, and maybe I'd go if we go to the second one here want to highlight. We will be bringing forward an item to approve advertising for a request for proposals for the South Broad Street Complete Streets project. We know that's of concern to a lot of folks in our community, and we are. moving forward with that planning effort. At this point, we're really excited to get that going. And so wanted to highlight that. And then our business items on the May 19 meeting. Sorry, I should have mentioned that this is May 19. Our big item that night will be our budget supplement. So this is the way the city pays for all of our services and offerings that we are providing. Oh, you're right, June. Thank you. That tonight is May 19th, I could see. June 2nd, and that should be June 2nd. Continuing on June 2nd will be our budget item. And then a discussion on the feasibility of providing advisory body compensation, which was something that our council compensation committee recommended that we bring forward. So we've done that analysis and we'll bring it together for discussion. Apologies for that heading up there, but otherwise happy to answer any questions.

Probably not a question, more of a comment. I feel like I'm on a reel right now. But anyway, the transit app, just wanted to highlight that's also in other areas. So if you happen to live somewhere else or visit somewhere else, like a college student may, they may have it in Berkeley and they also may have it here. So it's kind of also one other bonus about the transit app is that You can use it in different places, and you don't have to keep downloading a new app everywhere you go, which I think is another nice plus with the transit app. And I have to say that so far what I've heard has been very great feedback from RTA as well as from Slow Transit. So just really excited about the government efficiency and convenience. So I think that's really cool. And then lastly, I just wanted to ask you for Building Safety Month, I know we'll be going through a lot of that on May 26th, quite honestly, with the code enforcement. Is there anywhere else that we are highlighting Building Safety Month? Is that going to be at Farmers as well or just Public Works?

Looking to my team to see if there's any additional... Good question. I'm not aware of any specific events.

Hi, Timmy Tway, Director of Community Development. Thank you for the question. No, we recently had a new building official started, but jumped right in. We have some displays in the lobby. He also has some coloring pages for children about Building Safety Month with crayons, so if anyone wants to come get those. And we have some posters up, but we're really celebrating internally, just thanking our staff for all the work that they do. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. And I will say, as we talk about Public Works Week, in my statewide role on the Cal Cities, we talked about how do we get public works as emergency responders to be considered as emergency responders. That legislation did not go through this year, but it's something that they are still looking at, because along with our current emergency responders, the public works are also often first at a lot of events, especially floods. Just wanted to pass that on. Thanks. Any questions for my colleagues? All right. Well, with that, we'll move on to public comment about items that are not on the agenda. So are there any public comment items?

Yes, we have four speakers. Sean Harris, Fitzgerald Kelly, Barry Price, and Tyler Corey.

Sean, come on up.

This is not on the agenda, but just some concerns. One, why is it Republican? Am I forced to look at China, a communist country, and the Chinese economy as an example of what can happen when the government prioritizes the well-being of all of its people? Over the interests of a handful of oligarchs, China has managed to lift 400 million people out of poverty, while we, through concentrating wealth into the handful of oligarchs, sent our people back into poverty. Our Constitution, and I know there's some orders up there, in both its preamble, and so correct me if I'm wrong, and Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 dictates that our federal government provide for the general welfare of its people. How is allowing corporations to send our factories, industrial-based jobs overseas congruous with this principle? This has been going on for 30, 40 years. How is debasing our currency congruous with conserving the purchasing power of the dollar? How is dismantling our already anemic social safety net congruous with the American people's general welfare? Are members of my party, the Republican Party, so wedded to what they consider a free market that they would allow America to collapse? Further, we don't have a free market. What we have is a market that select few banks, defense contractors, tech companies, and monopolies are backstopped by unnecessary government contracts, regular bailouts, which mom and pop business never see. When tariffs force them out of business, they simply collapse, as well as the local economies in towns such as Miami, Oklahoma, a town my family's from, Towns so far off the radar and removed from Washington, they're simply referred to as flyover towns and whose inhabitants are sneered at as deplorable. I can't speak for all Americans, but as someone who's lived all over the country, not just the California coast, I take offense at that and the party that the failed presidential hopeful that uttered those shameful words comes from. Americans won't forget what Democrats have done and said to small town America, whether from Bill Clinton signing the NAFTA Implementation Act or the Commodities Futures Modernization Act to a Democratic Senate staffer committing a film to sex act in the Senate hearing room, in a Senate hearing room. The Democratic Party prioritizes advancing boutique identities into symbolic positions of power, rather than doing what is needed to save our economy, namely balancing the budget, slashing defense spending like 80%, and further, creating FDR's work-worthy programs that the Democratic Party created back in the Depression. Today's Democrats, those don't even come off their lips. So we need to rebuild our industrial base. And I'm not dreaming about, you know, assembly lines from the 20s and 30s where we have AI and everything. A lot of it is automated now. So we're in deep trouble. We need to balance our budget and cut defense spending. That is a cancer on our society. All our problems stem from this ridiculous defense spending. $1.4 trillion is about to be spent and it'll collapse the dollar. Thank you.

And next.

Fitzgerald Kelly. Thank you. Then Barry Price and Tether Corey.

I am Fitzgerald Kelly and I live on Bouchon and near the senior center and I'm here about the loggerheads which is happening regarding the slow rep theater and the construction there and mainly about that tree it's one of the big it's possibly the biggest tree oak tree in the city not on a river or a creek So it is struggling on its own and it's healthy and it's going really well. And the situation we're in, as Jan Marks mentioned in the February 3rd meeting, she said, this is a comedy of disaster. No, she said it's a tragedy of it. She corrected herself. She said it's a tragedy of errors. And that's my concern. that you might have been receiving some information from some of the electorate out there. We're concerned that the tree is going to be sacrificed because of poor planning on the city's part. Holy smokes. So sorry, does this count? I'm so sorry. Yeah, we're talking about maybe we might wanna have to think outside the box and leave the tree alone and possibly put a park there. Think about that. That would be, there aren't any parks downtown that I can recall and I've driven around quite a bit. I think a suggestion would be to use one of the big buildings in town which is empty. And it looks like there are very few bidders on interest in the Rite Aid buildings, for example. There's one out at Smart and Final on Johnson, and there's another one over in Foothill Plaza. So I think that might, and the one on Johnson has lots of free parking. So certainly a reconsideration on your part would be appreciated. Maybe even consider re-voting that four to one and reconsidering it. That's all. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Stewart, Council members, staff. It's good to see you all again. I'm Barry Price with the Sloan Tenants Union. I'll be brief tonight. I'm here in eager anticipation of next week's study session on code enforcement. Even though it might seem like another in an endless stream of study sessions on code focused on housing safety. The last session on rental registries was kind of a missed opportunity to advance a pro-housing policy that would have directly benefited the nearly two-thirds of slow residents who are renters. We are, after all, a city of renters. So that brings us to next week's session. And since this is Building Safety Month, we are urging you to prioritize safe housing and direct staff toward more affirmative enforcement of existing habitability standards. We urge you to reclaim San Luis Obispo's place as a municipal leader in public health and housing safety, which we have sadly relinquished that leadership position to other communities. And we can take that back for any policy to be effective. There must be education, information and meaningful accountability. We'll be especially interested in hearing next week how you plan to hold violators accountable and what that's going to look like. I trust that you have the courage to be change makers, not just defenders of the status quo. I know y'all don't want to be the council that never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. So thank you very much. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Stewart, members of Council, staff and community members. My name is Tyler Quarry and I'm here with the Solar Science Union following up on what Barry just shared. We are really stoked to see what you all deliberate next week. I haven't quite dived into the staff report that was just released for the meeting but I'm sure there's a lot to go off of there and I think it's great that it also coincides with Building Safety Month and so I hope that you all can show our community that you really do value building safety by taking the study session next week very seriously and demanding some more concrete action be taken by code enforcement. Going back, however, to a few months ago, it feels like it was just yesterday, when we had the study session about a rental registry, I want to briefly talk about efficiency, good governance, and informed decision making because this is really why we want you all to strongly consider a mandatory rental registry as we hammered on many times just a few months ago and as we've continued to belabor since. We believe that City staff and you all as policymakers and direction providers are like a horse charging forward with the blinders on right now. As has been very well established, affordable, safe, and secure housing is very much a crisis, not just here in San Luis Obispo, but around the world. And there are good data-informed policy vehicles you can use to make your lives easier and the lives of those who bring items before you significantly easier. And we believe this to be one of them. having seen amazing work being done not just here on the central coast of California up in Monterey, but in other parts of this country by implementing a rental registry. And so we look forward to working with you all and not just disappearing and fading away and continuing to bring up the subject time and again until we see more concrete action. I think I really want to hammer home that continuing to move forward and trying to address the housing crisis in the way that you are is yes, valuable, but it can be even more valuable to establish something like this, but that will not only allow you to continue doing infill, up zoning when it makes where and when it makes sense. But do it in a more informed way and in a way that will allow you to also tackle some of your other really important city goals that you have established and that you will establish once more early next year. So thank you very much for your time and have a good meeting.

Thank you so much.

Any other speakers? No, that was our final

Thank you. And I do just want to remind people that whether people are here for housing livability or for code enforcement in housing safety, et cetera, that on Tuesday it will purely be a study session. No ordinance will be brought forward. So I just want to make sure people know that because I know that sometimes people have been thinking it was a meeting where we were deciding something. So just wanted to kind of put that out there so everyone is aware. And about an hour ago, the agenda was put out there for next Tuesday's study session if you want to check it out.

May I? Yes. I'm sorry. I miscategorized one of the. OK. So Don C? Dan, sorry.

All right, Dan. Thank you so much.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to all of you commissioners. My name is Daniel C. I am a registered professional engineer in California. I am employed full-time at Caltrans. I wrote to you two weeks ago but could not be in attendance in person. I'm not representing Caltrans here, just to make that clear. I'm also a part-time lecturer at Cal Poly in the civil engineering department. I was I recently learned about two months ago via Facebook post that the city is planning to do intersection upgrade at King Court and South Street and it's a pedestrian hybrid beacon and there's clearly the need for it from a pedestrian safety standpoint and bicyclist but the project that's proposed As a resident of King Court, two complexes there, 130 units, we are currently underserved by the current, and it's unsafe to get out left turn onto South Street because there's no halfway point to turn. like the neighboring exposition, they can turn halfway and then merge when safe. We have a concrete median that allows cars to turn left into the neighborhood to our north. We have no opportunity to go halfway. And so we have to wait for a gap to sync up with a pedestrian hybrid beacon. It's going to make this worse actually for us. And so we were not considered traffic was not considered vehicle traffic leaving king court 130 residences with approximately you know 260 to 300 drivers um we were by the project that's planned is is not considering our our operation and our safety um and so that pedestrian hybrid beacon will shut down the entire intersection preempt for pedestrians it'll make illegal all vehicle movements uh the current system that there that's there RFP rectangular rapid flashing beacon it allows if pedestrians are on our right if we're trying to turn left pedestrians are on our right will actually give us a break because it will stop traffic and it gives us the ability to turn left and so most of my trips are westbound towards the freeway Trader Joe's Costco etc and so you know More than half of my trips are going that direction. And I would presume that that's probably the case, that more than a 50-50 split is going that way. So 260, 300 drivers multiple times a day trying to get out of there, especially at morning commute times and stuff, it's very precarious. And so I urge the city to, and I'm more than happy to meet and discuss any of my ideas in more detail. If there's a future meeting, I'd you know whatever um i have a pres included a presentation in my previous um so um i'm happy to engage uh city engineering staff council etc um on that so thank you thank you very much

okay that's really the end okay so we will move forward to um our consent agenda and first before actually before we move forward i just want to say thank you to all the people who came for the um public comments i know that it takes a lot to come up here and speak um and so i just want you to know that even though we don't get to respond right now this is a moment where we do here as staff and as council um and we will be getting back to people that do um come to

tell us um information at the public comment so i just want to make sure people know that sometimes i don't mention that so with that we have a consent items is there anything anyone needs to pull from the council vice mayor francis uh nothing i need to pull at this time but i do need to recuse from item 5e recommendation number two that concerns the transfer of money for the south broad street uh contract engineer because of my uh home's proximity to broad street

So will you be recusing from 5E as a whole?

I believe I can just recuse from recommendation number two. Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Anyone else? All right. So with that, is there any public comment on any of the consent items? No, there's not. Okay. Any motion for a consent agenda?

Council Member Boswell? I'll move the consent agenda.

Thank you. Council Member Marks.

I'd like to second that.

Great. Thank you very much. And with that, City Clerk, can we get roll call?

Council Member Boswell.

Yes.

Council Member Marks. Yes. Vice Mayor Francis.

Yes, with the exception of 5E, recommendation number two. Mayor Stewart.

Yes, and that is 4-0 with the exception of 5-E-2. And Council Member Shor has been not available at this time. And now we'll move to the public hearing and business items. Before us is a public hearing item to review and appeal of the Planning Commission's decision to revoke a conditional use permit, also known as CUP, for fraternity use at 280 California Boulevard. So I'd like to ask at this time, if any council members, starting with Vice Mayor Francis, if you've had any ex parte disclosures of contact with anyone who has provided information to council members not on the record so the information may be used as part of their decision-making process, not as if they've ever spoken to anyone ever before. Vice Mayor.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I've met with both the fraternity in question as well as Greek Life more broadly from Cal Poly.

Thank you. Council Member Marks?

I have had no ex parte communications.

Thank you. Council Member Boswell?

No ex parte communication.

Thank you. And I have met with two people, Eliran Solomon and Joshua I'm so sorry, Joshua, I blanked on your last name. President at the time, I believe still now, of AEPI to hear their thoughts. And I have also met with IFC in the past as part of the SCLC. We've continually had conversations about how we're going to have better relationships with the Greek life and neighborhoods in the community, but not necessarily about this exact CUP, but just thought I would highlight that. Thank you so much. And with that I will pass it over to Community Development Director Timmy Tway and Assistant Planner Mallory Patino to please present the report. And I should say that we'll do the report and then we will have 10 minutes for the appellant which would be AEPI and then with that 10 minutes that's for your entire report and to answer any rebuttal of questions. So if you wish to hold off some of that 10 minutes to be able to answer questions, make sure you do that as well. And then we'll get back to the report. I think we are having technical difficulties, so just give us a minute.

I will be presenting regarding the appeal of a revocation of a fraternity conditional use permit process under application numbers APPL 0174-2026 and mod 0036-2026. Beginning with staff's recommendation, which is for Council to adopt the draft resolution denying an appeal and upholding the Planning Commission's decision to revoke the conditional use permit for fraternity located at 280 California Boulevard. The conditional use for it in question is for the property addressed as to at California boulevard he's owned high density residential the property is developed with a single family residents containing 10 bedrooms. access to the property is direct off California boulevard and halfway avenue the property is walkable distance from cal poly near other single and multifamily residences and near a liquor store. City Council allowed Alpha Epsilon Pi to establish fraternity at 280 California in August of 1983. The use permit limited residents to a maximum of 19 individuals and included a condition for rereview if complaints were received. The appellant has improved and used the project site as their residence and for fraternity activities since this approval. In 2024, based on confirmed code and use permit violations, the use permit was forwarded to Planning Commission for re-review. The Planning Commission reviewed and modified the use permit to allow continuation of fraternity usage in November of 2024. The modified CUP set a maximum gathering capacity of 25 people for special events or meetings and added conditions for re-reviews for conduct on the premises resulting in three citations within 12-month period. The Police Department issued two citations for noise violations on April 16th and 18th, 2024, both issued around 10 PM with approximately 150 and 100 people on site respectively. Code enforcement issued a notice of violation in July 2025 relating to those April incidents as they resulted in violations of conditions 4, 9, 10, and 12 of the CUP. This notice included a warning that issuance of a third citation before April 16th, 2026 would result in a re review. Police issued a third citation for noise violation on October 29th, 2025, around 9 30 PM with approximately 100 people on site. Staff notified the fraternity that planning commission would re review the C. U. P. In January 2026. On March 11, 2026, Planning Commission conducted that public hearing for the re-review to consider continuation of the fraternity. Staff evaluated the fraternity, considered recent violations, code requirements, and previous recent council and advisory body actions. Staff recommended the Planning Commission revoke the CUP. Planning Commission heard the applicant's and public's testimony. The applicant testimony acknowledged past violations and highlighted reduced citations improvements to fraternity organizational safety, and increased neighborhood outreach. The applicant and other members of the public emphasized the fraternity's role as a Jewish student community organization and space, and one commenter opposed renewal, citing noise and disruptive behavior. After considering staff's evaluation and recommendation and applicant and public testimony, Planning Commission determined they could not make the required findings and voted unanimously to revoke the CUP. Specifically, they found design, location, size, and operating characteristics were not compatible with residential uses, and that continued use as a fraternity was not appropriate for the subject location, was incompatible with the neighborhood, and was detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of those living or working in the area. On March 23rd, 2026, Alpha Epsilon Pi's Cal Poly chapter filed a timely appeal of Planning Commission's decision to revoke the CUP process as APPL0174-2026. Alpha Epsilon Pi disagrees with the Planning Commission's findings that continued use of the property as a fraternity would harm the health, safety, and welfare of the nearby community and is incompatible with neighborhood characteristics. The appellant requests that the City uphold the appeal, reverse the Planning Commission's decision to revoke the CUP, and amend the permit conditions to ensure long-term compliance and accountability. The appeal submittal can be distilled into two main issues. The first appeal issue, the appellant provides that continued use of the site as a fraternity with revised conditions would be compatible with the neighbourhood, not be detrimental to health, safety, and welfare of the nearby community. They've provided three reasons to support that argument. In reason number one, the appellant argued that the project is located in the R4 zone, which is the most appropriate zone for higher intensity residential uses, including fraternity operations. They provided that revocation of the CUP could lead to spreading similar activities throughout lower density R1 or R2 neighborhoods. Staff responded that operation of fraternity is conditionally allowed in the R3 and R4 zones, requiring approval of a CUP, which allows the City to determine whether this use is compatible with existing or desired conditions in their neighbourhood. It also provides an opportunity for staff to evaluate site-specific conditions and potential neighbourhood impacts. Additionally, revocation of a CUP requires fraternity operations to cease, but does not authorize or direct those activities to relocate into other residential zones. Fraternity related activities, including hosted special events, are not permitted in R1 and R2 zones, and any fraternity operation without an approved CUP would constitute land use violations subject to code enforcement or other actions. Secondly, the upon argued that they've shown measurable organizational improvement, reducing their citations by eighty five percent in the last two years, demonstrating a long term commitment to compliance that they argue is not adequately considered by the planning commissions. in the Planning Commission decision. They include the organization operates under Cal Poly's academic calendar and the existing condition that measures compliance on a rolling 12 month basis obscures an accurate view of the organization's behavior and improvement that they believe deserves more consideration. Staff notes that several complaints and use permit violations triggered the Planning Commission to re-review the original use permit, which resulted in the modified CUP in November 2024. This modification included the provision for re-review if three citations were received in 12 months, and while operating under this modified CUP, the Police Department issued three citations for noise violations, For events that resulted in violations of conditions relating to maximum gathering capacity, expanded hours for noise ordinance, compliance requirements for special event permits and compliance with local laws. Additionally, staff received records after the March eleventh planning commission hearing relevant to this appellant's argument. Records were of self reported event registration forms submitted by. interfraternity council organizations to Cal Poly's fraternity and sorority life office. These records show that 30 events were registered with that office at 280 California since the modification of the CUP. 16 of these events included an expected attendance count ranging from 65 to 160 individuals, All in excess of the twenty five allowed without a special event permit. The organization has been aware of the conditions set forth in their modified C. U. P. and still held or planned events that resulted in citations and violations of the C. U. P. Furthermore, during the March 11th hearing, the fraternity representative presented information about their reductions in citations and planning commission considered this information in their decision. In the third reason, the appellant states that they surveyed 14 residents that live within 200 feet of the property. They argue that the results from their survey do not support claims of ongoing harm with 12 neighbours reporting no disturbance and two neighbours noting occasional noise that could not be directly linked to their site. The appellant states this direct input from their immediate community contradicts the Planning Commission's conclusion that their operations are detrimental to the neighbourhood. No evidence was provided to staff to support these claims relating to the neighbourhood surveys. Copies of the results, information related to the manner of survey, names, addresses, length, et cetera, none of that was provided. While the appellant states that some neighbours have not voiced concerns, the citations received over the past few years do provide evidence that there have been instances of noise violations disrupting the neighbourhood. The second appeal issue relates to revised conditions mentioned in the previous appeal issue. Appellant provides that revised conditions of approval would support the findings required for continued use as a fraternity. The appellant proposed some revisions to and provided information on challenges relating to existing conditions and suggested some new conditions. Specifically, they requested revisions and noted challenges related to conditions 2, 4, 9, and 10, which are fully listed in the staff report. Existing condition 2 relates to requirements for re-review for three citations in 12 months. Conditions 4 and 10 provide maximum gathering limits of 25 individuals and the requirements and process for special event permitting for events that exceed that limit. Condition 9 requires compliance with the noise ordinance between extended hours. In summary for Condition 2, they requested re-review be triggered by receiving two citations within one Cal Poly academic semester. for conditions four and 10 that maximum gathering limits create practical challenges and don't reflect in activities disruptiveness. The appellant requested the city evaluate activities based on impacts and provide a flexible approach to special event permitting process For condition nine, the appellant requested that noise be measured using objective decibels at the property line. While the staff report includes a detailed response to each of the requested revisions, overall the proposed revisions to these conditions would not result in a material change to the organization's ability to comply with zoning regulations or the CUP requirements. These changes are unclear in how processing implementation and enforcement would occur, and the proposed revisions would not change the fraternity uses incompatibility with its surrounding neighborhood. The appellant also suggested two new conditions, one to establish and require formalized event notification and coordination with the police department for gatherings that include below the current special event threshold. And the second is for mandatory annual compliance meeting with code enforcement and city staff for our chapter leadership. The proposed new conditions are vague and would require additional staff time and resources, and it's not clear how the processing implementation and enforcement of these would occur. Regarding the request for annual meetings with code enforcement, City code enforcement team already has established regular communication with Cal Poly's Greek life community and staff is always available for additional questions. Finally, it is unclear how either of these conditions would address the neighbourhood conflicts that arise from fraternity operations. Actions on appeals are de novo review, which means that the city council must exercise its independent judgment to determine if the applicant appellant's conditional use permit should be modified, revoked, or remain in effect as it was prior to planning commission's revocation. Council is not bound by the planning commission's findings or conclusion. The decision made by council shall be made based on the required findings of municipal code sections 1711070 and 1786130 I have summarized these on the following slides. They are provided in full in the staff report. This is the required findings in summary for approval or required to approve a conditional use permit. And these are the summary of the required findings for a CUP for fraternity or sorority use specifically. Some questions have risen regarding signage at fraternity residence. We wanted to note that signs are allowed in residential zones with residences allowed to have one sign each with a maximum 20 square feet of area. Sign types can be wall signs, hanging or suspended, freestanding post or flags. All of these signs require a building permit. City Council can consider staff recommendation and staff has provided other alternatives outlined here. Council can either continue review of the appeal, grant the appeal and modify the CUP or grant the appeal and retain the existing CUP as is. To conclude, staff recommends that Council adopt the draft resolution denying an appeal and upholding the Planning Commission's decision to revoke the conditional use permit for a fraternity located at 280 California Boulevard. Thank you for your time, and staff is available for any questions.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Councilmember Marks.

Thank you. Thanks for a very concise staff report. I'm just curious, hypothetically, if we did deny the appeal, would the fraternity be able to apply for another conditional use permit in the future? How does that work? Is there a time period that they would have to wait?

No, there's no time period that they have to wait. They could just apply again tomorrow.

Okay, thank you.

Okay. Thank you. I'm going to interrupt this for just one minute. Someone has left keys out in the lobby, so if you are looking for your keys, Assistant City Manager Scott Collins has your keys. Is that a black lanyard? Ah, there you go. All right, we've got a taker. All right, back to the hearing. As far as Any other questions, Vice Mayor?

Yeah, thank you so much. I know there was a little discussion of this in the report, but if you could remind us, how many CUPs are left at this point concerning Greek life specifically?

For fraternities or fraternities and sororities? Fraternities and sororities, please. John from Code Enforcement I think has the actual number. Two for fraternities. Two for fraternities, thank you. I don't know the sororities.

Thanks.

Hi, I'm John Mezapeza, the Code Enforcement Supervisor. I believe there are, counting this use permit here, is the question how many use permits there are, correct?

Yeah, how many are left?

Yeah, there's two for fraternities. I believe there is, I have to look in here, but... I'm not sure, but we haven't revoked any sorority use permits, so I believe there's over five or six of them right about there.

I could give you an exact number in a few minutes. Do we know at peak how many fraternities had CUPs when we had kind of the most CUPs out there for fraternities?

I wanna say we had about six fraternity use permits as well.

And all of the revocations have happened within last, of those four that have lost their CUPs have been in the last five years, is that right?

Correct. There's been some that were additionally reviewed that were determined to be void for lack of use as well. So they weren't necessarily revoked, but they weren't used. Because they just weren't being utilized. Yeah.

And, you know, if we were looking at, there's a request tonight to potentially modify the CUP, but if we wanted to look more comprehensively at the program and CUPs in general, since they were all sort of, It's my understanding they were all done at different times. This one was 1986. But many of them were kind of done 40 years ago or different eras. And if we wanted to more comprehensively adjust how we approach CUPs, I guess the question is, can we do any of that tonight without necessarily addressing this issue?

Hi, great question. This issue tonight is specifically about this CUP. And so what we do do if we hear consensus from the council about conditions they think are effective, we generally take those back and over time we try to make sure that we're incorporating effective conditions into other use permits. But if there was a desire to have a holistic view of that, that would be a different

work item than this specific item this evening thank you that was my understanding appreciate it thank you and i'm sorry if i missed it but can you remind me what size sign people are allowed to have even if their cup is revoked in the residential zone 20 maximum square feet that's current standards there is the potential that some signs that are existing that are permitted may not be that but new signs 20 square feet so if their cup is revoked that would be able to stay the their current sign because that's been the conversation from some of the other cups that were revoked the signs still stayed because it was a sign not necessarily because of their cup correct if we can verify that the sign has been permitted then their sign can stay okay Thank you. And then as far as kind of along the lines of Vice Mayor's question, obviously today is about today. And as far as seeing if we were doing a re-look at all CUPs or how we do CUPs, that would be in like the 27, 29, if we wish to add that to a work plan in the future years of budget, or would that be part of the conversations we're still having at the end of this year?

Great question. If you hadn't had time to read the 37-page staff report for next week, then you read my mind. So one of the recommendations in that staff report is to consider directing staff to re-looking at our regulatory framework for fraternities and sororities as a work plan item in the next budget cycle. So that is in the next week's conversation.

Great. Thank you so much.

City Manager.

Thank you. And certainly, hopefully my colleagues sitting next to me will jump in if I misstate anything. But I think it's important for us to maybe step back for a second and identify these are use permits that are run with the land and are considered to be a property right. And so in order to modify them, we have to give people due process before we go change them. And we are really limited with what we can do based on, you know, is there a term in the permit itself that allows us to kind of pull it up and make changes to it? Is there something in our code that we've adopted that allows us to do that? It depends on if the code changed in the intervening years. If some of these are really old, then we really don't have the ability to just pick up use permits and sit at a meeting like this and make changes to them without having a public hearing process. So I also want to help set that out for folks who are listening to understand why we have to take things based on what we have in front of us today. which is this one use permit that went through a process that included a hearing in front of the Planning Commission and then the appeal today. So certainly if I've said anything wrong, I hope will be clarified. But that's the other piece that we will be again kind of talking about or maybe wrestling with next week potentially. But again, these use permits, they they they run with the land and will stick there as long as the use continues unless they lapse, as mentioned earlier.

Perfect. Thank you for kind of setting the stage a little bit more for future With that I don't see any other questions All right, so we'll move on to the appellant and I'd love to open up the public hearing to the public So we'll start that off with the ten minutes for the appellant and as a reminder I know I said it already, but I'll say it again and Save time for yourself for questions or rebuttal if you would like, and then let the city clerk know how many minutes you would like to set aside so that she can make sure to make that note for you.

Good evening, Mayor Stewart and members of the City Council. My name is Joshua Pinsky. I'm a third-year business administration student with a concentration in finance and also the president of the Sigma Omega chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi located at 280 California Boulevard. Thank you for taking the time to hear us tonight and for considering our appeal. We want to begin by saying that we respect the Planning Commission and the seriousness of this process. At the same time, we respectfully disagree with the conclusion that revoking our permit was the only available solution. The current conditional use permit system is not effectively solving the broader issues surrounding fraternity housing and student activity. This point was acknowledged by several commissioners. Commissioner Jorgensen noted that the revocation, in quote, is not a solution because students still live there, they still can party, and they still can make noise. Chair Houghton described these hearings as Groundhog's Day, recognizing repeating issues without broader structural change. And Commissioner Tully stated directly that, in quote, the permit thing does not work for these guys. and question whether the current process realistically reflects, and quote, the way that life happens up there. We appreciated those comments because they reflected what many students, residents, and even city officials have acknowledged. The current system is fundamentally struggling to work in practice. We're not here to deny that violations occurred. They did, and we take responsibility for them. We are here to demonstrate that our chapter has made meaningful improvements, that the current CUP structure itself contains major practical flaws, and that there is a realistic path forward. In the 2023-2024 academic year, our chapter received 13 citations. That number was unacceptable, and it forced us to seriously reevaluate how our chapter operated. Since then, we have received two citations in the 2024-2025 academic year, and only one citation in the current academic year, in October 2025. We've had no citations since October. This represents an 85% reduction in over two years. This improvement demonstrates our members can host events responsibly when proper oversight is in place. Between November 2024 and February 2026, our chapter registered 30 events through the university. Only three of those events resulted in citations, meaning 27 registered events occurred without complaints or violations, including events with significantly higher projected attendance. This record challenges the assumption that attendance alone constitutes a detriment to the neighborhood. The city's rolling 12-month review framework does not align well with academic year leadership cycles under which student organizations operate. The citations that triggered this process involved substantially different chapter leadership and membership groups, and there has been only one citation during the current academic year. While the 12-month standard may make sense administratively, it does not fully reflect the yearly turnover that student organizations experience due to the academic calendar or the improvements made by the current leadership. The Planning Commission's primary finding was that the continued use would negatively impact the community's health, safety, and welfare. We respectfully disagree. Since the earlier incidents, we have strengthened monitoring, accountability, crowd management systems, and safety training. Per FSL policy, members are trained in Narcan administration, sober monitoring, alcohol safety response, sexual assault prevention, and fentanyl awareness. Students will gather socially regardless of whether COP exists, and revocation risks removing many of the safety systems and oversight currently in place. This also raises a broader question. What is the purpose of a conditional use permit? From our understanding, conditional use permits exist because certain properties are being used for more than they were originally designed for. However, our property is one of the very few in San Luis Obispo that is historically designed specifically for fraternity operations and high density student use. Our property is located within an R4 high density residential zone intended to support student oriented use like ours. With nearly 14,000 Cal Poly students living off campus, student activity cannot simply be regulated away. As Commissioner Flores questioned during the hearing, revocation risks and quote, pushing these events further out into the R1 areas rather than keeping activity within properly zoned high density neighborhoods. We made a direct effort to understand our immediate neighbors' perspectives. Our outreach conducted by our risk manager within roughly 200 feet found that 12 of 14 nearby residents reported no disturbances from fraternities or sororities. The remaining two reported only minor concerns not attributed to our property. Crucially, we received a letter from the resident managers of Lee Arm Apartments, the complex directly adjacent to both of our properties, stating that our chapter, end quote, has not been a nuisance and that they have not received any complaints from apartment tenants regarding our fraternity. They ended the statement by saying, quote, our interactions with the members have been respectful and we have no problems living adjacent to them. This is significant as they house over 30 residents immediately next door. Additionally, we learned that the complaint for one of our April 2025 citations did not originate from an immediate neighbouring property. according to the sighting officer. We later learned that the complaint came from individuals associated with residents for quality neighborhoods, not from residents living directly next to our house. We learned at our planning commission hearing that the individual who called about the event explained he had to walk down Frederick Street to determine where the noise was coming from. After hearing that, our chapter attempted to recreate a similar loud environment to better understand the concerns ourselves. And from our observations, the noise was not clearly audible from the distance being described. While every complaint must be taken seriously, we believe this context is important when evaluating whether our property is creating a direct and ongoing disruption to the immediate surrounding neighbors. We also have made direct efforts to improve communication and compliance by proposing educational meetings to code enforcement to help incoming members better understand permit conditions and expectations. At the same time, many IFC members feel the relationship between fraternities and enforcement has been increasingly hostile rather than collaborative. For example, DoorList, the event management platform used by many chapters informed our IFC that code enforcement staff created accounts on the platform to monitor attorney events and proactively cite them. From a student's perspective, practices like these discourage transparency and create an environment where organizations feel less comfortable openly communicating and collaborating with the city. This situation is becoming urgent. While we appreciate the city's upcoming study session, broader reform is not moving quickly enough for organizations operating under the current structure. The financial burden is becoming unsustainable, with some fraternities receiving over $10,000 in funds in a single academic quarter. At the same time, organizations now worry that simply posting philanthropy or recruitment events online may trigger enforcement, scrutiny, discouraging transparency. Many students also feel the noise ordinance is highly subjective with little predictability regarding how complaints and citations are ultimately evaluated. The single biggest structural issue is the 25 person cap. For a chapter with over 100 active members, this threshold is unrealistic for normal operations, including meetings, religious and philanthropy events, and recruitment activities. More importantly, the assumption underlying this condition is that higher attendance automatically leads to greater harm to the neighborhood. In practice, that has not consistently been the case. Much of the concern about detriment is ultimately tied to noise, and the city often seems to assume that noise increases directly with the number of people present. However, our own observations and decimal readings during events have shown that volume levels often remain relatively consistent even when attendance exceeds the current cap. In other words, attendance alone is not necessarily an accurate indicator of actual neighborhood impact or disruption. The record before the city supports this. Again, between November 2024 and February 2026, 27 of our 30 registered events occurred without citations or complaints, including events with significantly higher projected attendance. We believe this demonstrates that accountability should be based on measurable disruptive behavior and actual neighborhood impact rather than on arbitrary occupancy assumptions that are extremely difficult for student organizations to comply with in practice. For our chapter to function successfully going forward, the capital and number must be revised or removed entirely. A chapter of our size cannot realistically operate under a 25-person operational threshold. The requirement to apply for a special events permit 90 days in advance and pay fees up to $3,000 also does not align with how student organizations actually operate. Furthermore, moving all social operations offsite is not feasible. Offsite events create significant logistical, transportation, safety, and monitoring challenges, while regulated fraternity housing allows events to occur in environments with direct oversight, sober monitoring, accountability, and established safety systems. We also learned from sorority presidents that a single off-site event can cost over $20,000 once venue, transportation, food, security, and other logistics are included. Given that our chapter's quarterly operating budget is only around $25,000, expecting student organizations to regularly move off-site events is financially unrealistic and unsustainable for student-run nonprofits. To move forward constructively, we respectfully request modifications that revise the unrealistic 25-person cap, structure re-review threshold around academic semesters rather than rolling calendar periods, and explore collaborative oversight approach within university and IFC once gatherings reach certain thresholds. Create clearer, more objective standards regarding noise enforcement and complaint evaluation, ensuring complaints reflect actual neighborhood impact from immediate surrounding residents. create a more practical pathway for reoccurring low-impact events, and maintain accountability through measurable violations and enforceable operational conditions. Ultimately, the question before the council is whether our chapter is demonstrating measurable improvement, a commitment to accountability, and a realistic, workable, and enforceable path forward. We believe the answer to all three of those is yes. We ask the City Council to recognize this measurable improvement and the structural flaws in the current process, and allow us to continue operating under revised, sustainable conditions. We believe continued oversight, reasonable modifications, and collaborative reform offer a far more productive path forward than revocation alone. Thank you for your time and consideration. I'm happy to answer any questions alongside my partner throughout this process, Ali-Ron Solomon.

Thank you. You'll have 35 seconds for questions if someone had them. All right. Thank you very much for that. Does anyone have questions? I think we'll last 35 seconds. Vice Mayor? OK, Vice Mayor.

Sorry, Mr. Pinsky, can you come back up? Thank you. Just a really quick question for you. Thank you for your testimony just now. During your discussion, you mentioned that revocation would remove safety measures, but wouldn't those still be mandated by Cal Poly, some of the trainings and requirements that if you were to gather at any location, you'd still be mandated to do?

Yeah. I believe that we need to be as transparent with everyone as possible. And I just believe the way right now it's going is we're being very transparent with Cal Poly. And I feel like we're being as transparent with you guys. I just believe that we're not causing as big of a harm as we might be. I believe your colleague wants to step in.

Yeah. I can add on to that a little bit. A huge problem with being transparent with FSL at this point is, as you guys saw, any information that we give them, they give back to us. So if we give them transparent information about whatever we do, then it will come butt us in the butt, and we would get probably a $350, $500, or $1,000 fine for zoning violations. Thank you.

Thank you. And Council Member Marks had a question. Do we have time for her to ask as well? Yes? Okay.

Is it working? Oh, good. Really quickly, how many members are in your fraternity?

101, if I'm not mistaken. Thank you for the quick question and the quick answers. Appreciate it. All right, now we have time for public comment. That's from people in the community, not from the appellant. Do we have any public comment, City Clerk?

Yes, we have three public speakers. Neil, I'm sorry, I'm not going to try and say your last name. And then Jonah Halberstorn, and then Brett Ross.

Thank you.

Good evening members of the City Council. My name is Neil Parthasarathy and I'm the President of the Cal Poly Interfraternity Council. I just want to say a few words regarding the concerns and recommendations that Joshua Opinski just shared with you. IFC fully supports when there are legitimate public safety concerns, dangerous conduct, or genuine impacts to neighbouring residents. However, many student organizations are facing significant financial burdens from escalating fines, permit reviews, legal costs, and enforcement processes that often stem from proactive monitoring rather than complaint-driven enforcement. As discussed in Alpha Epsilon Pi's appeal, Some chapters have faced over $10,000 in fines within a single quarter, while others have incurred thousands more in legal and permitting costs simply trying to navigate the current CUP process. Our student organizations are run primarily by college students, and I feel they will not be able to handle this level of financial burden. Also, IFC's concern is that the escalating penalties and costs at this level may ultimately hurt long-term compliance and collaboration more than they help it. One major concern we have is that enforcement seems to be more and more tied to ordinary student organizational activity and visibility that would commonly exist in many student living environments. Social media posts, visible affiliation with fraternities, or use of guest list systems seems to be triggers for enforcement even without actual complaints, disruption in the neighborhood, or legitimate public safety concerns. When enforcement is done this way, it shifts focus from responding to actual community impacts to proactive monitoring of student organizations simply based on their affiliation. We believe enforcement should focus on verified conduct and actual impacts to the community, while also encouraging warnings, corrective action, and collaboration before penalties escalate. At the end of the day, IFC is simply asking for fair, consistent, and behavior-based enforcement standards that protect residents while also recognizing the realities of a college town and the limitations students' organizations face financially. Thank you. Thank you.

Jonah Overshorn.

Good evening, members of the council. My name is Jonah Hovershorn, and I live just down the hill on Tassajara in a house with several other AAPI brothers. And I want to speak tonight about my firsthand experience with how noise violations are currently handled. And I feel like you guys get a lot of input and hear from a lot of non-student residents, people that have a lot more resources and time on their hands. So I just want to share a little bit about my experience being on kind of the other side of it. So when I first moved in this year, we were aware of how our houses are really grouped together. So we took it upon ourselves to try to be good neighbors and go around and give everyone our number and our names and just be like, hey, we don't anticipate a problem. We're not planning on hosting any parties. We just thought we'd be conscientious neighbors. One neighbor outright refused, saying they would simply call the police if they heard any noise instead. Since that interaction, I have spoken with police officers at my home roughly 15 to 20 times this year. The vast majority of those officers have shown up and told me I was not directly, that we were not violating the noise ordinances, but that someone had called so they were required to respond. On several of those occasions, they even showed up at our house noting they'd already been there earlier that day and no one was even home. Out of all these interactions, we've been ticketed twice, paying $1,400. Both times it was the same officer. The second ticket is what stands out to me in particular. On this night, there was four of us home, of the five of us. One of us was asleep upstairs. The other three of us were having a conversation in our backyard. There was no music. There was no party. Officer, I got a knock on the door. I wondered who could this be. Walked outside, and there was an officer, and they acknowledged herself that it wasn't very loud, but still issued us a $700 ticket saying that there wasn't much we can do, just our backyard was so close, like no matter what we do, it's a ticket. Thinking that this ticket was ridiculous and seemed incredibly unfair, I feel like that noise violations are to stop parties, not from people living in a house how you normally would. We paid the appeal fee and received a denial a few weeks later with no explanation. We mentioned to our landlord the situation and he supported us throughout this entire appeal process and mentioned that in the many years he's been managing a multitude of college properties, he has never seen an appeal get approved. My housemates are now generally afraid to go outside or have the windows open past 9 PM. A third ticket would be $1,000, a serious financial burden for college students, one that we can't afford. What troubles me most is how arbitrary this all feels. The outcome has nothing to do with what we're being allowed or not or any decibel or trackable metric. It seems like it depends entirely almost on what officer shows up and what kind of day or shift they've had. Meanwhile, our neighbor has nothing to lose by calling repeatedly. If the officer lets us off, they can just try again the next night. tying this back to a fraternity not only is this not work for residents in a fraternity where it's three strikes you're out and you get appeal and it's not really fair when the other team has unlimited pitches they can just try again every night until they just get lucky thank you brett cross steve stephen walker and then kathy walker uh brett cross san luis bispo

I know you received a letter from RQN. I'm not speaking on behalf of RQN this evening. So I'm going to give you my best Ken Schwartz impression here. Mostly people don't. Well, Jan will know who Ken is. So I don't know how many... I know the kids in the audience don't know the Incredible Hulk series, but Bill Bixby was... Dr. David Banner, and Lou Ferrigno was the Incredible Hulk, and I got a little story about Lou Ferrigno. Actually, Creekside Toys, he was there one year, I was about seven or eight, and I mean, I was a little kid, so I mean, the guy was massive. I think he still lives in Rio Grande. But the premise behind the Incredible Hulk was that, so Bill Bixby, who played Dr. David Banner, he had an accidental overdose of gamma radiation. So at times of extreme anger or stress, he turned into the Incredible Hulk. And nowadays we'd probably go to anger management and stress reduction groups. But anyways, the analogy I'm gonna get to here is with the students. So they're here this evening. They're perfectly fine. They're very cordial. They're very nice. But you add alcohol and the whole thing changes. And that's one of the real problems we have with the fraternities. They talked about, you know, the number of, I think John Dezapeza came up and discussed the number of sororities that had their CUPs revoked and there was none. And there's a reason for that because they don't allow alcohol at those events. So we discussed CEPs and how can you condition fraternities in general because they are really a special use. And you can do two things. And the one is going to be very unpopular unless you don't allow alcohol at those events. And that's probably not going to happen. The second thing you can do is you can require on-site managers. And they're not going to like that at all. I don't even want to look behind me and see what those faces look like. But that's something you can do. Otherwise, you've got a huge problem here. And I know next week we're going to talk about an overlay zone and where, you know, what kind of conditions that you could have, whether it be allowed. But currently, the system is not working very well. And the other thing I think you just heard from is, John didn't mention this, but we have, there's 80 known fraternities in the neighborhoods. And then there's 35, apparently, that they kind of have a sense of. So we've got a huge problem. And I don't know how you're going to solve it. I mean, certainly like to have Cal Poly say, hey, we're going to build a fraternity row on campus. But they don't seem to want to do that so much. So they're leaving it up to us. And so it's up to you to come up with those policies that are going to make the neighborhoods livable, because that's really what we're talking about. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening, City Council. I just wanted to respond to a person who is speaking on behalf of the fraternity. And as far as he was talking about CUPs and what a CUP is, bottom line, it doesn't matter It's a neighborhood. Those are single family neighborhoods, per the zone. And in order to fit into that neighborhood, there are conditions that are imposed on this fraternity, 25 people. Only 25 people can be in that house. Why? Because it's a house in a neighborhood. It doesn't matter about the density. The more dense it is, the more people are living closer together, the more people are impacted. So that's what the CUP is. And you've got to abide by the conditions, no matter if you like it or not. I want to cruise down the road at 50 miles an hour in the neighborhood. You can't. It's against the law. Why? It just is. That's the way it is. So you've got to follow those rules. And there is a bigger issue, and the bigger issue is Cal Poly over a number of years has created this issue by continuing to recruit fraternities and putting the burden on the city. And unfortunately, through Derek Johnson's administration, started then, the city didn't have its eye on the ball. And then post-COVID, boom, it was in front of everybody. So you really have to do something about it. The city, I feel, is very permissive with this stuff. It's Cal Poly's problem, bottom line. They're the ones who push it on the city. And then it's kind of cheeky to turn around and go, you know what? We want to do this and we want to do that. The IFC should go back to Cal Poly and complain to Cal Poly that they need places to enjoy themselves. And that is exactly what they need to do. That's where the complaints, it should be these guys complaining to the college. All right, thank you very much, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Our final speaker is Cathy Walker.

Good evening. I wanted to say first of all, that slow PD records don't necessarily reflect the actual noise in the neighborhood. There have been many times that I have gotten out of bed gotten dressed, I heard the bass from our house, which is 500 feet away, I walked down. And it was at their fraternity. And I've spoken with them. I've been in their courtyard talking to them like, Hey, guys, you need to keep it down. I did not call slow PD. There's been times that I've looked on their Instagram and texted their rush recruitment chair and said, Hey, guys, your music is too loud. Can you turn it down? So slow PD records are not an accurate representation of what's actually happening in that fraternity. And he said something about an RQN member went down. That was my husband. He's not really involved in RQN. But he had to work. And at 10 o'clock at night, we could hear at the base from our house. We thought it was 348 Hathaway, because that's the usual suspect. and went down there and it was insane. It was alpha epsilon pi. And we did call the police because we didn't feel safe at that point going. There are some times that I'll go up and I'll say, hey guys, but there are some situations that we don't feel safe. And we called SLOPD and they got a citation for 150 people. So I just want that to be clear that SLOPD records aren't necessarily what is a real reflection of what's going on. And I think SLOPD is fair. I first met Josh and Elrond when they showed up at an RQN meeting. He said he was with Mustang News. They didn't tell us that they were with a fraternity. They said, Elrond said he was, had your class, Erica Mearsworth, and he was on his way to your class and he was going to talk about this fraternity issue with you. It wasn't until the very end of the meeting that they told us that they were there because their CEP was coming up to the Planning Commission and we sat and talked with them and actually went over our actual time because we cared about them and they complimented us about how nice we were to them. we're trying to find solutions too we're not out to get them but they have to understand that a cup is not a by right entitlement there are conditions that allow it to conform to the r4 neighborhood where it where it is and one of those conditions is the 25 person cap at the planning commission meeting 18 months ago the first one they had they said they had no problem with that cap and markey kirsten said if they violated that cap there would be consequences they violated it i mean we know there were 30 parties so there have to be consequences for that so please support the staff recommendation thank you

Thank you. And that's the final public comment? Thank you. All right. At this time, yes. At this time, if staff has any specific response already to anything that's been said, but we also have a few questions probably. And Vice Mayor, your button is not on to ask the question. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

This is a question for staff, and I was just a little bit curious, I know we've navigated this a few times now, but how would upholding the revocation then impact enforcement? Because obviously there's current tenants there, they're all presumably fraternity members, So how do we navigate them continuing to live and gather without the CUP? Sometimes probably wearing their fraternity shirts or having dinners or whatever they're gonna do. How does that work moving forward?

yeah so i'll also invite john mesopeza code enforcement supervisor up to add a little more details but you know as we've stated in the past operations as a fraternity as defined in the municipal code without a cup is subject to code enforcement action as it's a land use violation and i think john can speak to some of the code enforcement efforts that go into what constitutes that fraternity use. Thank you, John.

There we go. So we generally won't get involved in enforcement unless we have a complaint. And that's going to come from someone in the public saying that there is a potential location that's operating as a fraternity without a permit. And essentially our investigation is going to include trying to show whether or not an event that occurred is sponsored or sanctioned by a fraternity. And so that does look like looking at social media posts, talking with residents, gathering any other evidence that might show that it was used by a fraternity, that they live on site. And then the only other portion that we have to show is that they're affiliated with Cal Poly, which is generally the easiest part.

So if they held any sort of gathering if post-revocation they in theory could be held to a land use permit as be since they would all be fraternity members or how

It would have to be sponsored by the fraternity in some way, and that's going to include either some kind of advertisement, some kind of money being collected, or letters being displayed at the event, so to say that it is sanctioned by the fraternity.

So formalized as an event by the fraternity.

Correct. They can have a birthday party or some other kind of gathering, just a general party at their residence, as long as it's not shown to be sponsored by the fraternity.

Thank you for that clarification.

Can I add on to that, Mr. Mezapeza? So, birthday party, hear that. Also, this happens to be a faith-based Greek organization, so if there are faith-based holidays or Shabbat dinners, et cetera, that need to occur, how does that work versus a routine gathering?

Yeah, again, if we can show that it was sponsored by the fraternity in some way, and it's an event that was put on by the fraternity, it could potentially meet the definition of what a fraternity is, and we would move forward with a land use violation. They're absolutely welcome to have a gathering of some kind of faith-based event that isn't sponsored by a fraternity, and there wouldn't be any enforcement to follow up on.

So as long as the Greek letters were not on it, they could still have a Shabbat dinner or something of that sort? Correct. Yeah? Okay. Thank you. Just wanted to confirm. Thank you. I will bring this back to you for a minute, Mallory and Rachel. So I know that a lot of these CUPs were old. However, I don't think Cal Poly has ever been a semester school and yet one of the appeal number two section refers to it being a semester and so many incidents within a semester. So I'm just curious where that came from and how are we managing that so many incidents per period of time if they're in a quarter versus a semester?

Yeah, so the request came from the appellant in their appeal submittal to switch this. As I understand it, it's, you know, two incidences per academic semester is what they've requested and they've stated to be provide for quicker response times and that it would better align and provide accountability for student organizations so um so for going forward we're going forward yeah they've requested to make that change okay and then um there's

Some people have been mentioning single-family home neighborhoods. Some have mentioned R4. I know we've had this conversation with previous Greek organization. R4 is not necessarily a single-family home neighborhood. So can you share why in our conditional use permit, I know this answer, but I just want to have it on the record, why in an R4 that people are looked at in the same way as a neighborhood that's in an R1 with CUPs?

I just want to make sure I'm understanding. You're asking why are we looking at all the neighborhoods if the CUP is only allowed in the R4?

I mean, they're in R4. They're not in R1. But yet, with the CUP, people are concerned as though they are in R1 with single-family homes.

I see. This site, and I could pull the map back up if you want, is very close to R1 and R2 neighborhoods. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. That's all I needed. Thank you. I think that's all the initial questions I have. Council Member Marks.

Yeah, this is for staff. I'm just curious, how old is this CUP? Do you know when it was first instituted?

So the original CUP was instituted in August of 1983, but that CUP was modified 18 months ago in November of 2024. So their current operating CUP is 18 months old.

Okay. Uh, how was it modified? If you can just refresh my memory.

Yeah, so the original was referred to planning commission for a review based on complaints and, um, confirmed code case or confirm violations of the. Uh, at that time, planning commission reviewed and modified to modify the permit to allow continuation of the fraternity. That was the 2024 planning commission hearing.

November okay thank you and I'm not sure if you have an answer for this but it does the continuance or the discontinuance of the CUP have any effect in terms of Cal Poly's decision to maintain affiliation with the fraternity or does it factor in sometimes fraternity to what we say kicked off campus, disaffiliated by the university. Is discontinuing a CUP, or in this case, it would be rejecting the appeal, does that have an effect in terms of how Cal Poly regards the fraternity?

To our knowledge, it does not factor in.

Okay, thank you. And in terms of the noise complaints, is noise monitored at the border of the property or is it a question of the noise extending beyond the property in terms of the decibel account?

I believe we do have police in the building to tackle this question. I feel more comfortable if they would answer this as they're the ones who enforce the noise ordinance.

I see a police officer approaching the podium.

So yes, Deputy Chief Schaefer.

Yes, thank you.

Madam Mayor, Council, Aaron Schaffer, Deputy Chief with the Police Department. Just to rephrase your question for me, you're just asking for what the media code says as far as when officers go out there to enforce noise, what the limits are and what the restrictions are and what they're looking for?

Where you actually monitor the noise. You just stand at the border of the property? Or are you interested in the effect of the noise, say, on the neighbors, on the neighborhood?

Well, it does get complicated, but for the ease of it is if it's before 10 o'clock and you're 50 feet from the property line and you can hear the noise, it's not a violation, right? After 10 o'clock, it's property line. And if you can hear the noise, then it's technically a violation. We do run into issues when you have like 280 California's next to the arms. Obviously, they're closer than... 50 feet. So it's going to dictate based on the time of day when they complain. But we take that into consideration where that noise is coming from. But in the end, it's the officer's discretion to decide when it gets there as long as it meets the media code of whether or not to issue a citation or not.

I think city attorney has to add to that.

Thank you, Mayor, Council Members. There's a lot of confusion about this. And so I just want to go back to the code and what the code says. And the code does say that it is 50 feet from any noise maker. and does not include noise that is not audible beyond the premises. So there's a combination of things. So it's not a strict like if I can hear it at the property line. It's 50 feet from the noisemaker and in a manner that is causing a disturbance in the neighborhood. One indicia of that is that someone's called and said they're bothered by it. That doesn't live on that property, right? So that that's our first clue that we're that we're bothering folks beyond the premises. And so it's not a like, we're taking a tape measure out and measuring from the property line to the sidewalk, or we have to have a surveyor out there to understand. Officers go out, they evaluate where this if they can identify where the source source of the noise is, they can estimate that that's more than 50 feet from a noise maker and they can stand off of a property or adjacent to a property and determine whether or not that that sound is audible in a manner that is disturbing beyond the premises.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Member, and thank you, City Attorney and Deputy Chief. I don't see anyone in the room from Student Affairs or anyone that works from Cal Poly. Am I incorrect? Not seeing anyone raise their hand. Okay. So this question, I don't know that you would actually have the answer for. I have some thoughts in my head about, but I know that neither of us are experts in that in this moment, is how many rooms at Cal Poly hold more than 101 people? Do you happen to know that answer? Like just any rooms at all or? up to you to answer if you know that, that'd be amazing. I don't. Okay.

I didn't think so, I just thought. I guess I meant like do you mean residential dorms or?

No, I mean places where groups like this can gather, whatever organization it would be. There are not many is my understanding, but I just thought if we had that answer it would be really great because I think part of the conversation that we can't necessarily answer today, but I think part of the conversation that I wish we had more than the 10 minutes to ask the appellants as far as where the other places are they could gather that would be on campus because I think some of the questions that have been asked in email to us and a little bit in public comment hinted towards this is the university should be providing a place where people can meet and organizations and clubs on campus and I don't have an answer for that in the staff report nor from the organization themselves or from Cal Poly and I think as far as support goes the fact that there's no Greek life or student affairs person here to help them is or help answer some of these questions is unfortunate all right without any oh city attorney

Yes, I just wanted to point out that there are no limits on the time that the council has to pose questions to any party in the room. It is entirely within the council's discretion to call folks forward and ask as many questions as you need to answer. That's not limited by the 10 minute. That's just the appellant's presentation.

Thank you. I appreciate that knowledge. Since they are not staff members, though, I don't think that I'm going to hold the appellants to that question. But thank you. I appreciate that. So with that, I think we can move forward to deliberations. I don't see any other questions from the team here. Anything else you'd like to add, staff members?

I'll just add that it does look like Cal Poly has their lecture rooms with capacity listed online.

They do or do not?

They do. Oh, great. I looked it up. There's not a lot. You're correct. But if you wanted to actually look... It is listed with capacity and by building.

Thank you. I did take a look at that before. Just wanted to see it out loud if it was possible so it could be on the records, but it is what it is. Well, with that, I guess we have to go back to the question of do we appeal what the Planning Commission has decided, as in revoking the conditional use permit for the fraternity use at 280 California Boulevard, or do we stay with what the Planning Commission has decided? And if anyone would like to kick off that deliberation. Okay, Councillor Boswell.

Yeah, thank you. I'll be supporting the denial of appeal upholding the Planning Commission's decision. First, I want to thank the fraternity for their extensive comments and creative thinking. I do generally agree that the CUP process is not working, I think, for anybody. I do want to point out that one of the reasons the CUP process is not working is the fraternities are violating the CUP. So it's partly a self-created problem, but I also do think there's some structural issues with our CIP process that I look forward to addressing least partially perhaps at our our next meeting so I'm not going to talk about those broader issues because that's as city manager noted we need to address the issue right in front of us which is the Planning Commission's decision and the appeal process but there's a lot to say there and the only other thing I'll mention too is I want to encourage IFC and the fraternity to continue to direct your concerns to Cal Poly and to President Armstrong. You know, you're a Cal Poly organization, and Cal Poly has a responsibility to help you solve problems. So I would continue to direct your direct comments to them as well. I want to thank the staff for the detailed staff report. It provided for me what I felt was sufficient information to make the decision on this appeal. I also want to thank the Planning Commission for, I watched some of their meeting for their very careful review of this process and their commentary as well. So that's what I was saying. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks to everybody for all the work on this. This is a very limited scope we're dealing with tonight, and I wish in some ways we could have this conversation about this appeal in the broader context of solutions. But given what we're facing tonight, I'm going to keep this pretty limited. I'm really grateful to AEPI for showing up and for being willing to engage in the process. I think that's actually an incredibly important part of this. They're striving to maintain compliance with municipal regulations, and that says a lot. Some of the other fraternities haven't even shown up at their hearings. So thank you for that. And also in some of your creative thinking that was definitely noted. I'm incredibly sympathetic to the need for students to have place for community and for fellowship. And we really need to find a solution here. I wish it wasn't the city finding the solution, but we'll talk more about that in a future meeting. I'm also incredibly sympathetic to the need for neighbors to have some degree of peace and consistency in their living conditions. The Planning Commission, I think, was cited by Joshua earlier talking about how this is like Groundhog's Day, and I would agree. These CUPs were mostly issued in the 1980s and conditions have changed substantially on the ground. I think actually learned from IFC that over 20% of students are now members of Greek life organizations, which is incredibly high even in comparison to other universities across the state. And so we really need to be taking a more kind of comprehensive look at what we're doing here and given that I don't see a way to issue a new permit or to to overturn the Planning Commission's decision tonight because if we reissue a CUP at this moment we are missing out on an opportunity to include this organization in a larger conversation about the usefulness of the CUP as a tool and how it should look in the future um and as the mayor alluded to it's my understanding cal poly is working on some more substantial solutions and really eager for them to bring those into the public and have a broader conversation with both us and with the community about what they're going to do to help us address this issue and i will leave it there for now and uphold the planning commission's decision thank you councilmember marks

Thank you. Well, I'm going to speak as someone who used to live on Albert Drive for over 30 years, and we always got along very well with our student neighbors, one by one and two by two. And they were great neighbors, but they graduated. And so uh, everybody wants them to graduate, but it's really hard to, uh, create a cohesive neighborhood in, in that kind of setting where you've got a large student population that's continually, uh, essentially turning over. Um, now the fraternities have a wonderful, um, long, um, long standing traditions and they have, um, I went on to the national website, 170 universities have chapters of your fraternity. So I support the idea of fraternities and sororities. The problem that we come up against is not students as individuals and not organizations as individuals, but it's the party culture and it's bigger than the fraternities. It's huge. It's a really big deal. And frankly, one of the reasons that my husband and I, he taught at Cal Poly for 30 years, moved out of the neighborhood is that we felt really overwhelmed by the party culture. It's really driving a lot of permanent residents out of the neighborhoods. And so The city, if you can understand our perspective, from our duty is the health, safety and welfare of all residents. And so when we see certain areas of the city being affected by this party culture, we have to do something. So that's the broader kind of context. In terms of the Planning Commission, I did watch not all of it. I watched part of it. But I do feel they did a very thorough job. And I also will support the denial of the appeal. I do want to say that I am impressed with the fraternity's analysis and suggestions for improvement in the future. And I hope that you will continue to engage and be part of of helping the city um come up with the best we can possibly do under the circumstances and the circumstances are that i believe cal poly has really um been irresponsible in terms of their lack of support for the fraternities and the sororities. And that they have, at one point, I actually was part of the Cal Poly master plan process when I was mayor. And at one point, the master plan said, yes, we need to have a Greek community, Greek row. The new master plan, which has just been approved, got rid of it, right? Well, it's a very low priority. It's still in there. But Cal Poly has made a decision somewhere not to actually build. So I think there may be some possibilities for fraternities to utilize some of the new dorms that are being built, the giant modular dorms are being built or possibly even some of the older dorms and ask for can we have a theme can we have like a fraternity theme can can our fraternity have um you know a piece of a piece of the on-campus housing uh or even build something for you that's better suited to your your needs Um, so I also want to thank staff for, um, and including the city attorney for reminding us what the code says. That's always important. Uh, so I am going to have to support denial of the appeal and, and, uh, I have to say, I wish that, um, I wish the system that we had worked better and I will do what I can to try to improve it in the future. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you to my colleagues. I appreciate all that you had to say. And some of mine is similar, so I apologize for the community to have to hear repeats. But I really do thank you, Josh and Eliran and everyone who's here from Alpha Epsilon Pi. I know it's a lot to come together, and where we're at today is not a win for anyone, quite honestly. And there are not enough rooms for the larger clubs to meet on campus, let alone if you were going to have an actual social gathering. I know that's something that Cal Poly has been telling the city manager and I that they're working on for future, but here we are today. And I thank you to staff and the Planning Commission. It was a lot of information to pull together and a lot to go through in detail. I have concerns also. We've had this conversation around the Greek row, and I've asked Cal Poly numerous times whatever happened to that, but I also understand that we're a little bit in a different time than when this was first proposed as a Greek row, but there may be some Greek possibilities in the future with the dorms or residence halls, et cetera. Where we're at though, I think that you heard it already today, is that the organizations on campus should be asking Cal Poly, where can we meet? Where can we do something? What can we do? And I think that is real. We don't really have places, large places to gather in this city as a whole. That's why weddings happen kind of outside of the city, quite honestly, even if whether you have anything to do with Cal Poly or a fraternity or anything of the sort. But we're also in a place, one of our public commenters mentioned they tried to kind of meet your neighbor and connect and be a good neighbor and kind of got shoved the door in their face. And I think that's also a problem. We have neighbors that are tired of the Groundhog Day experience of a new student member coming in next to them over and over and over again. And at the same time, that's also creating a really negative experience for the students. So it's a both and. And I see that and it's unfortunate. I know it's something in the Student Community Liaison Committee, SCLC otherwise known, that is Cuesta, Cal Poly and the city and some community members trying to figure out how do we do this going forward so that it's better for everyone. I think that there are some people that feel this is a college town and there are some people that feel this is a town with a community, with a university next to it. So I will say that right there we have a solid difference in opinion of where people are at and so we're trying to figure out how do we help everyone live here in a safe and enjoyable way and that makes it challenging for sure. I think that in the end, the bottom line is that this moment today and just talking about this appeal, it's within a very small box of confinement of what the issue is. And so I have to maintain the planning commission's decision to revoke the conditional use permit And I think the other part is there was some great information that was sent to us today at noon and truly there was such a great decrease in citations from 23 to 24 to 24 to 25 that that was the time for us to be having these conversations and saying what can we do together and how do we make these changes to CUPs and how do we have these conversations. But unfortunately, the violations are just factual in where we're at today. And so that's why I would uphold the Planning Commission's decision. But I do think that the change in leadership and the change in oversight has been positive with AAPI. And I just want to say thank you for that. and I hope that you do continue to work with us going forward because there is really, there's gotta be a change to what we have. Some people will be pleased, again, we only have two left, and they might be thinking, yay, two CUPs left to go, but in all reality, that doesn't actually solve the issue that we're talking about today. So I hope that we can talk about really coming together and working on something together where all neighbors, no matter what age, no matter what place we're in in life, that we can actually live together smoothly and comfortably. every now and then that maybe we have to call our neighbor and say, hey, can we tamp it down? But I believe that we can do this together in the future. So with that, I think the motion from what we heard today is pretty clear. I will go ahead and make the motion to revoke the conditional use permit for fraternity use at 280 California Boulevard that is upholding the Planning Commission's decision. Vice Mayor?

I will second.

Thank you. Can we have a roll call, city clerk?

Mayor Stewart?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Francis?

Yes.

Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Council Member Marks?

Yes, to deny the appeal.

And that is voted on 4-0 with, of course, Michelle Shoresman, Council Member Shoresman not here at this moment. And with that, we are going to take a 10-minute break. All right. Well, welcome back. Thank you. And welcome to Councilman Schwarzman. We'll now kick off our Vision Zero Action Plan, maybe to be named to something else in the future. Public Works and Utilities Director Aaron Floyd, Transportation Manager Luke Schwartz, and Transportation Planner Engineer Dana Murray will be presenting the report.

All right, good evening, Mayor and Council Members, Aaron Floyd. We are excited to bring to you this evening the awaited 2026, currently at least titled, Vision Zero Action Plan for your consideration. Before turning this over to Luke and Dana for the presentation this evening, I would just like to extend gratitude to the members of the community who came out and really provided a lot of input on this report that we're really excited to present to you this evening. So with that, I'll turn it over to Luke and Dana. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, council members. Can you see my slide deck? OK. OK, so you actually have to hit the Share button. OK. Thanks a lot for the opportunity and thank you, Erin. I also just want to highlight we've had a lot of great work on this plan. It's a culmination of multiple years of work. Much of that from my colleague here, Dana, as well as other members of the transportation team. I also want to really express my gratitude to Slow Fire, Slow PD for their input in the plan, as well as, as Erin mentioned, the many comments we've gotten from the community to guide and shape this plan. The item before you tonight are currently titled Vision Zero Action Plan. There's two key recommendations. The first of which is we are asking for council to adopt a resolution approving the plan. The second item or second recommendation is we're looking for feedback on the list of short-term safety project priorities that we've identified in your staff report. I also would just quickly note there are some items in a staff agenda correspondence that was sent out this morning that will likely need to be reflected in any action you take as part of this item. So what is Vision Zero? What is the Vision Zero action plan? Well, we've had an ongoing traffic safety program at the city. It's actually been really successful at reducing overall crashes. We've reduced crashes by 60% in the last 20 years. However, unfortunately, we've had a really unsettling level of fatal and severe crashes that have remained high. In fact, the last five years we've seen 19 community members killed in our streets. It's the highest five year total in the last 30 years. So it remains a key issue. And so the purpose of this plan is to provide a more robust blueprint to combat not just reducing crashes, but reducing severe crashes. It has lots of great recommendations on how we think we can achieve that goal to affirm the policy actions the Council took in 2016 to basically assert that no loss of life on our streets should be acceptable and we should do whatever we can to address that concern. A traditional traffic safety approach often takes the perspective that, well, you know, there's some bad apples. Human behavior is what it is. Some people will operate on the roads unsafely. People may get killed. It's kind of just a cost of doing business. It also typically focuses on just overall crash reduction. So if you were crashed, it's good. You're on the right track. Revision Zero really adopts a safe systems approach that says, well, you know, humans will make errors. That doesn't mean when those errors happen that people should be getting killed. So you look at, well, how can you add redundancy? If a person makes a mistake, maybe that crash happens, can it be designed for a street with lower speed so when the crash happens, maybe someone doesn't get killed? Can you improve the access so that emergency response can get there quick so that people that are involved in the crash can get the care they need as quickly as possible so they don't succumb to their injuries? So this plan really shifts to a systematic safe systems approach and a lot of proactive strategies to address these trends. Dana here will give a little more information on how the plan has been developed and some of the key trends and takeaways we've seen from analyzing all the crash history and community input on this effort.

Thank you, Luke. So to give a quick overview of how the action plan was developed, we analyzed the most recent five years of collision data and really focused in on our fatal and severe injury collisions to identify patterns and common risk factors, which includes developing our high injury network, the streets, and intersections with the highest concentration of severe injury collisions. We also supplemented our collision data with public input to prepare the plan's recommendations, including proactive and systematic strategies to hopefully target and reduce collisions before they occur. All right, so to go over some of our collision trends here, Let's see, throughout the last 20 years, we've been pretty successful in reducing overall collisions. However, we are seeing a pretty concerning uptick in our fatal collisions and our severe injury collisions as well. And while we look at our severe injury collisions, there's a few pretty like key takeaways and key trends that we're seeing. First off, what we found is most of our severe collisions occur on just a small number of our city streets. In fact, 80% of our fatal and severe injury collisions occur on just 11% of our city streets called the high injury network. And those are the streets that you'll see in the map here shown in yellow. I also just want to highlight that multi-lane arterial streets with posted speed limits of 40 miles an hour or above make up only 6% of our city road miles, but they actually account for 56% of all of our fatal crashes. We also found that most traffic deaths involve a victim traveling outside of a motor vehicle, specifically pedestrians and bicyclists make up about 69% of our fatal collisions. However, they only account for 26% of our citywide trips. I'll also note that speed is a major factor in our fatal collisions and really this graphic to the right helps demonstrate the reasoning behind that. So as speed increases, so does kinetic energy and in turn driver's field of vision reduces and also the likelihood of surviving a crash also reduces. A few other key takeaways with our collision trends. We really found that impaired driving is a significant problem. So driving either drunk or under the influence of drugs. And also we found that a lot of our fatal collisions are occurring at night. So 44% of our fatal collisions occur at night, despite a small percentage, only 10% of trips that usually occur during nighttime hours. And we also found that Unhoused community members are disproportionately killed in traffic violence. Um, also note that sometimes a few of these things occur at the same time, like impaired driving at night, or, um, someone unhoused getting killed during nighttime hours as well. So in addition to our collision data, we also solicited public input throughout the development of our action plan. We released an online public input map where folks were able to comment on specific traffic safety concerns or maybe report a near miss. We received over 400 public comments on our input map and we really found that folks' comments were pretty consistent with the collision data with like where and the key trends behind these collisions also note that we released a draft plan for public review and finally finally i'll kick it back to luke to talk about the action plan recommendations

Thank you, Dina. Okay, so what are the recommendations in the plan? How do we address this issue? Well, the plan kind of organizes recommendations to a handful of categories. First, we were looking at safer streets. So what can we do to design our streets to be safer? Second, how do we encourage, how do we focus community education awareness and traffic enforcement to improve the safety of the people using the streets. Another section of the plan focuses on post crash care and emergency response, including evacuation considerations. And then the last section of the plan focuses on safer street design. I won't talk a lot about safer street design recommendations tonight in that many of those recommendations are things that would be handled through the city's legislative advocacy platform. There are often decisions and vehicle standards that are made at the state and federal levels where we can advocate for those changes, but we have a little control to make them ourselves. So when we talk about safer streets, the plan looks at both some like systematic best practice policy recommendations. So example might be, hey, we should be doing crosswalk daylighting. wherever we can. Within that, we should prioritize locations near schools, near parks, senior living facilities, areas where we've had crash history. And then we also have some location-specific engineering recommendations. And these are focused on the high-injury networks, so those roughly 10%, 11% of our streets where we have most of these really severe crashes happening. focusing on energies on those corridors where we think will get the most benefit in terms of reducing those types of crashes. I do want to highlight that's not to say that we wouldn't be paying any attention to other streets and maybe don't have this those trends. And that's where a lot of the kind of systematic proactive strategies come in. So because we might be focusing a lot of our staff time and funding on the high injury network doesn't mean we might we wouldn't also be able to do speed reductions and things on other streets that have some of those common factors that may contribute to those types of crashes, even if they haven't been hotspots in recent history. In terms of safer people, our focus strategies on education are not only to increase community awareness of traffic safety as like a public health issue, but also to continue focusing on education awareness on the types of behaviors that are most commonly contributing towards these types of crashes. We've had a lot of community input on this. So I want to highlight like e-bike safety and the rules of what you can and can't do with other electronic mobility devices is a big focus area in terms of community education. We've been doing that already. If you've gone to our city's roll and stroll resource hub, we have a top focus topic area on e-bike safety. And that kind of realm is also evolving as other communities are struggling with some of the concerns they've been having with use of e-bikes. And we're seeing changes at the state level to addressing some of those concerns. In terms of enforcement, our primary recommendations in terms of enforcement strategies is one is what can we do to increase the amount of enforcement staff we have at the city is a big focus recommendation in the plan. On top of that, with whatever resources we do have, where can we focus our energies to be most effective? And within that, we'd recommend focusing our enforcement on the high injury network. And also on the, what we call focus on the five, the kind of five most common types of user behaviors that are leading to a lot of these severe crashes. Our SLOPD has actually been doing that very well. We're excited to see, hey, we're actually already focusing a lot of our energies in those areas, but the plan to recommend to continue to do that and track and monitor how we're doing that. In terms of post-crash care, our recommendations are things that could be physical improvements such as increasing investment in emergency vehicle traffic signal equipment so that our fire departments, our ambulances can get around town quicker when they're getting to emergencies, but also establishing kind of the process for how do we plan street design projects where maybe we're trying to slow speeds down on a certain arterial street, and that might benefit Safety and and be a reasonable approach for most vehicles, but if it adds friction to emergency vehicles or the ability of a neighborhood to evacuate those are things we need to flag early on to guide the design and scoping of a safety project. One thing I just want to acknowledge is with every street design project we coordinate closely with emergency response early on. And the reality is we may get some to some projects, either from the vision zero plan or from our circulation element or active transportation plan that once you start getting into scoping and seeing what is this design look like. There will be instances where the trade offs might not be something we can accept if they impact emergency response or overall public safety. There will be projects that we maybe can't design as we initially intended. So one of the key focus areas in the plan is also particularly in terms of like bicycle and pedestrian safety on these high speed, high traffic corridors is in some cases, are there parallel routes that exist that we can increase awareness and use of? Or are there gaps in some of those parallel routes that we can improve to give people an option to get off of the really high traffic roads particularly with with younger commuters getting to school and families that maybe would be best just getting off of those high-speed roads particularly if there isn't an ideal short-term solution to design those streets to be a lot more comfortable How are we implementing the plan? So we have a lot of really complex major projects already in some phase of either construction or planning or design. If we developed this plan five years ago, like these would be our top priorities. So the good thing is we're already in progress with a lot of these projects. We also have a couple other smaller projects that are in progress. Maybe they were identified in previous safety reports or other planning documents. And some of these we've mentioned, such as there's modifications to the high Garrett and suburban traffic signal that are still in progress. And these are already moving on. We're looking to complete these over the next several months. And last, excluding those projects already in development or in some phase of progress, we have about $375,000 in our traffic safety program capital project account. And staff has identified a series of projects in your staff report that we think we could advance within the current staffing and funding resources. With that said, we're looking for council input on those priorities. If within that you think there's something you'd like us to focus most our energy on, or if there's something missing that you'd like to see added to that list we welcome that conversation tonight at a high level those include things like modifying traffic signals to for example add left turn arrows only for left turn movements where we have a history of like t-bone or broadside crashes leveraging recent changes in the vehicle code to reduce speed limits where we can on streets where that's appropriate, and coupling that with community awareness education campaigns, as well as measures such as radar feedback signs or pavement markings or flags, so that just swapping out a sign is not the only measure to get speeds down, but that we can do whatever we can to increase drivers' awareness of these speed changes. Again, coupling with enforcement within our resources will allow. We'd also recommend continuing to install traffic signal emergency vehicle preemption equipment at signals that we don't yet have this equipment. And lastly, just continuing strategies to daylight crosswalks, again, focusing mostly on areas near schools where there's vulnerable pedestrian populations or we've had pedestrian crash history. And also exploring warning signs, or in some cases, turn restrictions where we've had a history of close calls or pedestrian or bicycle crashes. How would we measure progress on this plan? So we wouldn't be coming back to the council every year with a full update to this gigantic plan. The idea is this provides a blueprint that we can then take on and implement over multiple years. So our idea is we'd be coming back with more comprehensive updates every five years or so. But providing annual updates on like what's our latest crash trends citywide? What's the status of these safety projects that we're working on? So we'll be seeing frequent updates as well as maintaining it. We have an online crash dashboard where council members or community can go on and see what's the crash history looking like in my neighborhood. And you can filter through by year and crash type if you're interested in kind of tracking that information. A few example questions and maybe help guide the council discussion tonight. The first is we're just looking for, is this plan missing anything? Is there something you'd really like to see in this that's currently absent that you'd like to see incorporated before the plan is adopted? And then I'll highlight in the agenda correspondence that we sent today, we understand there's some interest in maybe considering an alternate plan title and we'd be supportive of that. We would just note, If there's ability to keep Vision Zero action plan somewhere in that, that helps us with clarity for grant pursuits. But we'd be welcome if there's ideas on a better, more clear plan title. And last, we have some minor administrative edits that we are recommending that have come based on council feedback and feedback from the community on this item that we'd like to recommend incorporating as part of a final action on the plan. Second area of focus is within the short-term traffic safety priorities, do you concur with those priorities that staff has recommended, but you'd like to see that modified or in certain ways? And lastly, is looking beyond this current work program leading into next financial plans, are there bigger new projects that you want staff to be aware of so we can be thinking about those as we're heading into the budget setting process? Lastly, again, the recommendations on this item is we're looking to adopt the resolution approving the plan. Again, if there's interest in changing the name, we want to capture that as part of this action so that the resolution reflects the final plan name. And again, if you have feedback on the project priorities, and again, if there's support from council to approve those administrative edits that were provided staff agenda correspondence, we hope to get that captured as part of any final action. That concludes staff presentation. We're happy to welcome any questions from the Council and community.

Wow. Thank you, Luke. That was a lot of information very fast. We very much appreciate that. I also want to thank you for the correspondence, agenda correspondence today, because it was incredibly thorough and answered a lot of questions that I didn't even know I had, quite honestly. So thank you for that. But I love how you've actually kind of done the updates on the Vision Zero plan, as currently named. that took into account a better way to say kind of what we were kind of I think maybe not I had not talked to anyone but I assume that many of us put into you so thank you for that for kind of wrapping it up and making it clear as far as like feedback from the emergency preparedness I'm sorry emergency providers instead of saying that they were making the first input and then making the decision which is what it kind of read like so just as an example so thank you for that With that, I will ask for any questions. Council Member Shoresman.

Hi, thank you. Thank you. First of all, excellent report. Very detailed in lots of ways, but also just some big, bold policy concepts at the same time. So I appreciate both the mix of trying to set a policy perspective on where we're going more generally, but identifying places where those policies could be put into practice. Some of my questions are about the Let's see, I guess it's in the staff report. It's around page, am I looking at the staff report? Yeah, 395. There's a Table 2 that talks about some of the modifications in the 26, 27 years still, and there's amount of money dedicated to certain different categories of improvements that we might want to do. over the next year and I was a little bit confused. It talks about like sort of the amount of money that we could do for each of these things like speed limit reductions and visibility enhancements, six new radar speed feedback signs could be installed and then I think at Crosswalk Daylighting, it talks about where in general we would do some of those projects, but it doesn't get down to the specifics. So how will it be determined where exactly that money gets spent? Is that something that the ATC is going to deliberate on? Is that something staff is intending to decide just based on your own data? Is that something that's coming back to council? Maybe you could clarify that for me a little bit.

Yes, good question. So some of these are location specific. So for example, the signal modifications at Grand and Monterey, LLVR Descanso, those are locations that were actually even flagged in previous traffic safety reports and that we have designs prepared for those projects and just didn't have the funding or the clear direction to move forward with them. But they overlap with the high injury network. So those are locations that we would support as short term actions because some of the work's already been done and we're just ready to go construct those changes. But they have a specific location and those dollar amounts are based on our best engineering estimates at this time. In terms of speed limit erections and visibility enhancements, we'd be prioritizing locations on the high injury network and then other high speed locations in the city. And some of this we're already doing as we're updating surveys for current speed limits. We're looking to take advantage of these reductions where we can. So it'd be a targeted approach of like all the high speed streets in town that we can take a look at, we'd be targeting those. In terms of traffic signal preemption equipment, we have a pretty good idea of some of the slowdown points in town that don't have this equipment, but we'd be looking for final concurrence from emergency services on the best spots to invest in those. Crosswalk daily pedestrian signage, those are things we're also kind of already doing, where this would be allocating a specific amount of budget to target those, again, K through 12 schools, areas like that. If there's interest from the council saying, can we maybe do more speed feedback signs and things like that, we'd absolutely welcome that interest. There might be some trade-offs saying, well, maybe we defer one of the signal modifications if we wanna add more resources in one of these areas versus the other. We welcome your input on these only caution I would have is if there's interest in starting something that's really big or new or complex, it might be challenging with our current staffing resources, even if the funding is there. But these would all be things that we can accomplish in relatively efficient timeframes. But yeah, again, we'd welcome your input if there's interest in reorganizing or prioritizing some of these things over others.

So there were a couple of emails. There were a lot of emails. Thank you to the community for all the emails. And I'll be transparent that I haven't gotten through all the emails yet. But of the ones that I have gotten through, there were some intersections and streets that that were specifically asked about. And so I'm just curious if some of those are ones that we are talking about for some of this funding, specifically thinking about Johnson and Orcutt, Southwood and Johnson, and then Santa Rosa and Oak. which is by the Santa Rosa Park. I'm wondering if any of those are kind of already on our radar for some of these speed signs or intersection daylighting, crosswalk daylighting, any of that.

Sure. So I can hit on each of those. So on Johnson, those locations, we do have concerns with high speeds on Johnson. Fortunately, we don't have the crash history along that stretch that would elevate it to some of the other high injury network corridors. We looked at Johnson and Southwood quite a bit as part of the 2023 paving project. There's a lot of interest in proving crossing safety and getting speeds down there. And we looked at a lot of different options and ultimately concluded, We didn't feel comfortable like marking a crosswalk or something that might present an illusion of safety, but not be a truly safe crossing. That's something bigger is needed. Something like a roundabout or pedestrian hybrid beacon. Those are projects that are more complex that we likely couldn't advance within the staffing and funding research at this time. Similar for Johnson and Orca to that intersection, it's always stopped. We don't have a high crash rate per se, but it's been a location where Every six months, someone emails and says, you should put a roundabout here. It's like, good idea. It's in our general plan. It just hasn't really been prioritized yet. I think there might be some impacts on the electrical substation right next door. But again, roundabout's a multi-million dollar project. So yeah, there's value there. It's just more about when do we prioritize something like that. Stuff that could be advanced in the short term if the council has interest is maybe Johnson could be prioritized for where we're investing in new radar feedback signs and things like that. Or if there's intersections that are problematic, we can take a look and see if there's daylighting needs or intersection site distance concerns. On Santa Rosa corridor, that's a good point too. So that is a Caltrans maintained facility. We have had two fatal pedestrian crashes in the last five years on that stretch between Olive and Murray with folks going back and forth from like Santa Rosa Park or on that stretch. I understand our partners at Caltrans have been collecting data and looking at the possibility of like an enhanced pedestrian crossing somewhere in that stretch. So whether it be a hybrid beacon or whatnot, it ultimately be their determination on what they feel is appropriate. But we've been supportive with providing counts or data that we might have and collaborating on ideas. And hopefully we could be supportive of whatever efforts they feel they can advance to improve pedestrian safety there.

But what I'm hearing you say is probably not likely anytime in the near future, because it is their roadway. And so anything that we would like to see is not necessarily their priority.

I'd say they're a process and they're design standards. And we can certainly recommend things and go through an encryption process, but we might not have the final determination on what the design looks like, if it's appropriate. The process that it takes to go build it can be more cumbersome. And if Caltrans is already leading and exploring a safety project there, my initial thought is might be best let them handle their destiny and we'll be supportive as much as we can. And we can focus on things that we maybe can advance more quickly and effectively.

OK, appreciate that. Do we have a specific you have very good data and a lot of detail on the crashes that you did are able to report from the last five year period down to the incidence of what happened in each of those crashes, which I appreciate that detail. Do we have any way of knowing, I don't remember seeing this specifically in your statistics, but the number of right hook from right handed, especially right on red turns in particular that we have crash data on?

I'd say we've got good data and could pull up a metric on like how many you know vehicle versus bicycle crashes involved a right turning vehicle trying to get into the weeds of whether it happened at a red light and if there was any restrictions of that is difficult to query just from a large data set we could go through collision report by collision report sometimes that level of details in there often is based on the testimony of the person involved sometimes that's conflicting you know I had a green light they came in front of me other party might say no they had a red light they turned on red so it's it's information we can get into the weeds on it takes some more analysis and focus on like just focusing on injury collisions we don't have a specific data point that says this percent of right hook collisions were at a right turn on red some some of our intersections are no right turn on red how is it determined which of those we can put that limitation on and which ones we can't That's a good question. Intersections where we have current right turn on register restrictions, in some cases they're there because you legally have to. So if you have a train crossing and there's times where you want to clear people off the tracks, we have signs that will come on. Other locations are like if we have the left turn bike boxes, if the right turning path overlaps with those, you need to restrict rights on red. or locations where we've had a history of close calls or pedestrian crashes. So if we were focusing on what might be the next candidate locations where right turn on red restrictions would be appropriate, we'd be looking at where we had crash history with pedestrians in general and then dig into those collision reports and say where some of those, that kind of context where might benefit from that. And then from a policy standpoint too is doing a quick check to make sure whatever capacity we might lose by not allowing rights on red is not gonna create like a level of service policy issue that we would need council direction to accept that deficiency. In most cases, Restricting the rights on red won't push the congestion to a point that we'd see those impacts, but it's something we look at. So those would be the metrics where we had crashes. We also do get a lot of great input on close calls from community members. The GIS input map that Dana mentioned, we still use that quite a bit. when we have a paving project or a development project, say like, well, what community concerns are we getting in this area? And if we see like six comments, they're all like, people right turning are not looking for me, I'm almost hit, I'm almost hit. Those are spots that help guide where we might do things like that too.

Do we have any places right now I noticed that there's $10,000 sort of allocated in your list here for pedestrian and bike crossing signage and one of them is $10,000 for potentially no right turn on red signs are there intersections that we're thinking that would be appropriate for right now that we don't already have designated that way.

It's a good question. A couple that come to mind is we've had history of reported close calls at the Orcutt and Laurel intersection. So right turns coming from Laurel are just kind of looking left and going maybe right as someone's walking into the street. So that's the location that we would be looking to prioritize. Some locations in the downtown, those are challenging, too, as well, in that you have a lot of pedestrian crossings, so sometimes your only opportunity to make a right turn might be during a right on red. With those, we might couple them with signal timing changes, too, where maybe the pedestrian crossing ends and there's more green time at the end, if then is the opportunity for a driver to clear that. So those would be some high-level locations we'd be looking at. I don't have a comprehensive list right now in that we'd be wanting to dig into more of those metrics to guide those kind of priorities.

Okay, last one, and then I'll let my colleagues have some time. There was one question in agenda correspondence about sidewalk riding, and I appreciated the answer to that because that's something that I know has been discussed at the Active Transportation Committee. off and on over time and there are some places in our city where our bike infrastructure just sort of ends suddenly and maybe there's still a sidewalk there and sometimes that feels like the safest place to go if there's no other infrastructure um that's safe to be in if you have a bike with you so i'm curious you know i know currently our ordinance is that there is no bike bike bike riding allowed at all but i know that's not the same in all cities so i'm curious if If that's something that we have considered at the Council level before changing that, or if if that's something that we might want to look at a little bit more closely.

That's a good question as well. And we have had some really healthy conversations with the ATC on that topic. We don't have a formal recommendation in the plan to make any changes to the Muni code as they currently exist. And part of that's because we haven't finished that dialogue. There was no final recommendation or motion from the ATC to take action. I had imagined that conversation will likely come up again when that's a priority for the committee to agendize. And any outcomes of that, we'd be coming to the council for policy direction. There are some trade-offs with allowing versus not allowing sidewalk riding. Some of our concerns that I think we hear from our emergency services folks too are the statistics are generally that riding on a sidewalk can often have a higher crash rate than riding on a street, even with just a painted bike lane. when that sidewalk's not designed for bicycle riding. So you have street light poles, fire hydrants, people coming out of driveways that aren't looking for two-way conflicts. With that understanding that some folks, especially school kids getting around town, may not feel comfortable riding on the street. And what we're seeing is a lot of families will do that. And going back in the last 10 years of enforcement history, The law enforcement is not targeting school children for writing in the sidewalks. The violations are for people that are getting cited or doing other things recklessly, they're adults. So trying to build a balance of like, do you accept that some level of sidewalk writing might happen for less experienced folks, especially young children without, hitting the threshold where you're like encouraging people to ride on the sidewalks, if we think that it might feel more comfortable, maybe get more riders, but could potentially lead to more negative safety outcomes. So it's a challenging policy decision. We don't have the formal recommendation on that in the plan, but I would expect there'd be more dialogue on that with the community moving forward.

Are there any cities that allow it in certain circumstances? I mean, I can see that that might be really hard to enforce, like where it's not safe or where it doesn't feel comfortable, but are there sort of variations on policies that do allow some limited sidewalk riding based on the circumstances of a particular area?

Sure. I mean, some cities treat it similar to what we do with like skateboards where you can ride on sidewalks outside of a downtown business district, but not where there's lots of pedestrians you're conflicting with. Another example is the city of Walnut Creek in the Bay Area has lots of high speed kind of expressways where there's no bike lanes, but there's 40 mile an hour traffic. You can legally ride a bike on the street, but it's maybe not the best idea. And in those cases, they might sign like for this stretch, like sidewalk riding OK. and it might say yield to pedestrians because there isn't really an on-street option at all. So I see those instances. There's some cities that do allow it for minors. What I don't see is clear data saying, like, what are the safety outcomes of those policy decisions? And sometimes it's context-specific. So we have bike lanes on all of our arterial streets. A lot of cities don't. So they might say, well, you can ride on the sidewalk because there's no bike lane.

Got it. OK, thank you so much. Thank you, Councilmember Boswell.

Thank you. Since Councilmember Schwarzman was bringing up some particular intersections that were mentioned in the public correspondence, another one came up quite a bit was Lawton and Funston. So any comment there on that one since we looked at these others?

i i do have some comment on that one i know the location in the neighborhood well so um and this may be a broader topic about how we handle neighborhood traffic calming requests whether it's cut through traffic or speeding traffic because we do have a neighborhood traffic management program that has a council approved kind of policy in terms of the process that we go through putting traffic calming in neighborhoods when i started here no one wanted speed humps no one wanted this stuff so we had requests in that queue but we'd get through them and we typically have staffing resources budget to do one or two neighborhood traffic calming projects a year where that has changed where now it's almost the opposite where everyone wants traffic coming in their neighborhoods so our queue of applications is you know 20 neighborhoods long we've also tried to streamline those we have a paving project or other maintenance where we can get community input and maybe do like a straw man poll to make sure the neighborhoods generally wants this and we've been able to implement some of those as part of routine maintenance projects i'd say that neighbor particularly we have two ntm applications in the queue they're just not at the top with that said we have this comprehensive planning effort that will be starting and coming before you next meeting on the south broad street corridor which again i'm not involved in but i know part of the focus scope of that is not just looking at what safety improvements might be appropriate for broad street but there's likely going to be access restrictions which will affect how traffic circulates in the neighborhoods on each side of broad street so That effort, I understand, will have focused analysis of like what traffic calming and neighborhood traffic management strategies might be appropriate in those neighborhoods near Meadow Park that we're talking about.

Great. Yeah, I'm happy to hear that. Yes. And of course, we infamously had a case where we put in speed humps and then we ripped them out because we didn't like them. So interesting challenge with the traffic calming. um yeah thank you and by the way thank you for the um we asked we asked a lot of agenda correspondence um so thank you i know i asked a lot of questions thank you for that thank you for the briefing as well which answered probably most of my questions um just a a few others here um in the agenda correspondence let's see uh number 10. let me get that back up so i had asked this question Yeah, I'd ask this question if there were any potential actions that would fit under this short-term, this $374,000 or however much it is budget, kind of that short-term projects that were particularly in the vicinity of the middle school and the high school. You put through a pretty good list of different projects, but I didn't quite understand were these projects that we are already doing or were there any of these that we aren't doing or we're not fully doing that might then

If we wanted to trade some dollars off from some of the recommendations for the short-term work that we could do so Sure, so the first couple items we noted on the response are tied to the 2026 roadway ceiling project So there's improvements going in on San Luis Drive some speed feedback signs and things like that on Johnson Those aren't eating into this budget, this Vision Zero budget, or staffing resources. Those are already happening. Outside of that, things that would be part of this short-term priority list in that $375,000 in funding that would be benefiting areas near schools, particularly Laguna Middle or CL Smith, would be the focus on, like, can we reduce the speed limits further on LLVR? And we'd be prioritizing, like, crosswalk daylighting in those neighborhoods on those routes into the school. So those would be prioritized along with other K through 12 schools for those and then LLVRs on a high-injury network. The challenge here is we have radar speed vac signs. We have school zone beacons and things on LLVR. We've already tightened up the lanes as narrow as we can get them. So that's been a corridor that's been particularly challenging to get driver speeds down if it feels comfortable going fast. But looking again further, can we reduce the limit and enforce it lower than it's at now is something that we'd be targeting with that. If there's other investments or safety projects within this kind of scale in those neighborhoods or in your other schools, we're happy to take your input on those.

Okay, great. Thank you. Leading pedestrian intervals. Are we deploying those on all PED signals or some? And if so, how are we making decisions about that?

We have them right now on pretty much every signal we can. So there's a couple unique exceptions where like if we don't have a pedestrian signal head at all, like there's a couple spots in the downtown still, we can't implement those. There's a couple locations where there's unique complexities with like a railroad crossing that's tied into how the signal operates where we've had some challenges. And I know one location where it's just a limitation on an older signal controller we have where we have like a flashing yellow arrow and the logic doesn't know how to hold the flashing yellow arrow for the PED lead where we've had to not put in the lead at that time. But everywhere else we've done it and there's a couple of locations that we just need some equipment upgrades.

Okay. So it is basically standard practice to do it everywhere we can, you know, accepting some limitations on unique areas.

Yeah, we've done that where we can because it takes no cost. It takes some staff time. Even Caltrans has done that and all the signals in our city limits too with their intersections.

How are they all set on the same timing in terms of how much lead is given or is that based on some factor with the roadway?

The state manual suggests a range of three to six seconds. We've done that in some cases. Other instances we've done longer, like at Santa Rosa and Monterey. Our goal is basically, depending on how wide the street is, and can a pedestrian get most of the way into the intersection so they're totally visible from all the approaches before it gets to the point where the vehicle traffic has a green. So I'd say ours range from anywhere from three seconds to as much as seven or 10 seconds, like at the Santa Rosa-Monterey intersection where we had a history of turning crashes against pedestrians.

Thank you. Question on the traffic studies for setting speed limits. So my understanding is that one of the factors that goes into that is what is like the current speeds that we're actually observing on the street. So does it typically make sense that we would want to do the speed study after we've done the physical traffic calming because then we would see lower speeds and could potentially justify the lower speed limit or how do we think about sort of the timing of you know, physical projects and the speed studies?

If we have a project plan where we're doing some physical traffic calming, we'll often, whether it's a formal speed survey or an informal data collection effort, we'll go get speeds beforehand, but we'd often wait to do a more formal speed survey update until the improvements are in. Some of that's because that makes more sense. We might be able to set a lower speed limit if the natural speeds have come down, but also there can often be a challenge with enforceability of posted speed limits if you made changes to the streets. So for example, we just collected new surveys on Tank Farm Road. We've made some striping changes, Grant Avenue. So often we'll wait if we can. The exception might be if an existing speed survey is due to expire before the physical improvements are in. We don't want to lose ability to enforce the current limit. Great.

Thanks. That might be it. That's good for now. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thank you to my colleagues for asking a lot of my questions. I appreciate it and thanks again for all the time and energy you all put into this. I'm so excited we're talking about it. I wanted to come back to something you kind of touched on a few minutes ago with Council Member Boswell and it's that neighborhood request process and I know there's some discussion in there about how that's going to reform and I know It's tricky because we have so many requests coming in now and the urgency for people in neighborhoods can feel really intense and just kind of wanted to maybe get into the weeds a little bit on how we're going to take in those individual requests and then process urgency and then We have this data, but sometimes the data lags compared to what's happening on the ground. How are we going to evaluate how these new requests, especially if a lot of them come in for one particular area, maybe things have changed enough? Sorry, that was a long runway to say. What are we going to do differently?

Sure, so if the requests are based on line of sight or something like that, we won't wait. We'll take in those. Our typical process is that if we get a request for daylighting or an intersection safety study, we'll do those as soon as we can. If there are locations near schools or where we've had crash history, we'll prioritize those. If they're less urgent, we might bundle them and push them out to our maintenance crews once every couple of months so they can do a bunch of curb painting at one mobilization. When we have requests that are more focused on speeding, that really warrants physical changes to the street. It can often be more challenging. Our first approach will be can we make sure our enforcement partners are aware and can maybe do some targeted enforcement. We have a rotating radar speed trailer that had been broken for like a year. We just got it repaired. One of them's working again, one of them broke again. We can rotate those out. It's just a message to drivers that maybe aren't aware they're speeding. In terms of more physical traffic calming, it can be a real challenge to get those addressed in an efficient way. Our current, and it's for a couple of reasons, our current neighborhood traffic calming process has been a council vetted process that I think is intentionally deliberate. in that it requires a certain amount of formal application and then a city assessment of is there a speed and volume issue that exceeds our adopted kind of threshold points. And if so, it goes back to the community members to get signatures within their neighborhood to show there's generally more than one person that wants this. And then we go through a detailed series of community meetings, which ultimately leads to like a formal ballot. And the current policy is that the majority of the properties in the area need to participate in the vote. And within that, two-thirds need to support whatever is being recommended to move forward with it. It's hard to get one community to agree on almost anything. And so it often leads to projects that aren't getting delivered at the end of the day, or it takes a lot of staff effort. So that process can be cumbersome. If there's council interest in revisiting that, that's certainly something we can look at as part of our work program to come back with maybe some ideas on streamlining that if there's interest. The other bottleneck is really just staff time and funding resources. These can be pretty labor-intensive projects to make sure everyone's voice is heard. We know what the issues are we're trying to address, making sure there's not any concerns from an emergency services standpoint. At the end of the day, a typical speed hub can be $7,000 to $10,000. Something more complicated like a speed table can be $15,000. Right now, we have budget to do one or two projects a year. If there was interest in doing something more accelerated, we might want to increase that budget, but that might be pulling away from our focus on some of the higher speed corridors too. I think neighborhood quality and safety, especially near schools is really important. The challenge is too, it's not where we're seeing a lot of these really severe crashes. So like, how do you focus your energies? Is it where people are really getting killed or is it where you don't want the next person to get killed because they're walking to school in a neighborhood? So we'd welcome council input if there's interest in coming back or visiting how those projects are implemented. If there's interest in doing something more rapid, we can come back.

a separate item maybe some ideas of what that might look like awesome thank you so much for that detailed answer I had a community member asked me today about table 10 on page I guess 126 thereabouts and that's the engineering recommendations for potentially things that could be implemented to improve safety there. And one of the things that doesn't appear on there is additional signals. There's bicycle signals and pedestrian hybrid beacons, but not just regular traffic signals. And there was just curiosity around why signals aren't considered as one of the engineering solutions.

Sure, the omission from that table wasn't necessarily an assertion that signals wouldn't be part of a safe systems approach. We don't have a whole lot of intersections that meet warrants that we haven't already signalized or been looking to do a roundabout maybe as a first option. So that would still be part of the picture, and we'd be willing to add it to the table if that's had some clarity.

Thank you so much. I'll leave it there for now.

Thank you, Council Member Marks.

Um, yeah, thank you. You know, I'm interested. I really appreciate the mapping for the low low stress bike routes. And I also wonder if the cut through traffic with the neighborhoods are are actually the same route. And so I'm responding to the talk about uh woodbridge and uh lawton and funston but also people cutting this is from um the emails we've been getting cutting through in back of the donut shop and you know to try to avoid having to queue up at the corner of south street and broad um and uh So I'm wondering if these routes are still actually low stress if we're allowing cut-through traffic. I wonder if you could address that. I may be wrong. I just looked at the maps. I didn't do the kind of detail analysis you guys do. But I'm just wondering if it looks to me like the cars are trying to find those low stress routes. So what can we do to keep the cars on the road and not in the neighborhoods.

Yeah, there certainly is rat racing in certain areas where people will flow like water. If there's a faster path, they'll find it. And I'm sure and aware that is happening in that Meadow Park neighborhood. These routes that you see on that map are not new things we've identified. These are projects that are in our active transportation plan as designated neighborhood greenways or off-street bike routes. When we would implement a neighborhood greenway, one of the first things we look at is, is there an existing speed or volume issue that might warrant physical traffic calming in addition to the guide signage and branding? And so Mill Street is one of those routes that we just talked about with the roadway ceiling project that we are recommending speed cushions because the speeds are too high. So hopefully one of the side effects of that is we don't have people may be cutting through other neighborhoods, but maybe they're shifting to Monterey Street or other arterials where you can go in a more free front way because the neighborhood street isn't as fun to kind of jump through if you have some physical impediments.

So I see what you're saying.

Yeah. So and when we do maintenance projects like our paving project or if we're advancing like a focus capital project to advance like a greenway or bike route, we look at speeds and saying, like, are there things we need to do to get fast traffic off of those routes? So, yeah, it's definitely part of the equation.

Thank you. I also would like to have more clarity about the idea of loosening up sidewalk riding by bicyclists because, in my opinion, sidewalks are for pedestrians. And pedestrians can jump out of the way if a bicycle is heading towards them possibly if there's a place to go my concern is that with e-bikes a lot of them go really fast and you notice them in the bike paths sometimes i think well they should really be on the road not in the bike path but if we just started loosening up it's like oh it's okay if you feel some say can go on the sidewalk what happens to the pedestrian so i uh i wonder i wanted to ask you uh how how would you balance if if anyone is contemplating allowing sidewalk writing how would we balance that with the safety of the pedestrians and the people with baby carriages and senior citizens and people walking or running for um recreation or transportation so how how what factors would staff look at when trying to balance the safety of course there's a safety concern for the person on the bike but what about the safety concern about the person who's just walking down the sidewalk

That's a good question. And that's, you know, currently we do design some shared use paths that look like a wide sidewalk, like on Madonna Road or along LOVR near Laguna Middle School. But they're designed to be wider so that there's space for cyclists to pass pedestrians. And also there's no like obstructions in the path, like a streetlight pole or something that you might hit a handlebar on. Even within those, we'll still get some complaints from people walking that feel accosted by an e-bike blasting through. In some of those cases, that's not legal now. So Class 3 e-bike, a bike that is pedal-assisted up to 28 miles an hour, currently you're not allowed to use those on shared-use paths already in the vehicle code unless... an agency decides to amend a policy specifically to allow it. Right now it's illegal to use those types of bikes on a trail and any bike on a sidewalk. So a lot of those concerns are things that maybe you're seeing that are already illegal and the focus is on like how do we make sure people know it's illegal and how do we enforce those? But that would be a key factor too. In some cities that do allow sidewalk riding might have nuances. So for example, you could say, Sidewalk riding is prohibited with the exception of minors under 16 and no e-bikes. Some cities have policies that might allow certain users to ride on a sidewalk, but might still prohibit faster bicycles from having that ability.

Where I see it a lot, and I do think it is warranted, is again at this corner of South Street and Broad. When the cars queue up, they're taking up the bike path. So when I see the bicyclists coming along and they go, oh my gosh, there's all that traffic, there's no bike path anymore because it's covered by cars. So then they go on the sidewalk or they cut through the gas station, which is another hazardous thing, people coming and going and all that. So I think there may be areas where an exception could be made or the sidewalk could be painted green or something. But in general, I just, I'm wondering if we just loosen it up as the Active Transportation Committee asked for it to, softens i think they said soften soften recommendations in the plan regarding enforcement of illegal pedestrian coffee and sidewalk riding by bicyclists so if we just loosen it up or soften it or whatever then we're giving out the message that it's okay a big it's okay and that um uh i don't i just i'm curious would you approach that with signage or how how would one uh

Even do something like that sure and with some nuance to some of that conversation with the active transportation committee. Well, there are some folks that are advocating for allowing bicycle riding on sidewalks, particularly for minors some of that conversation was. If you have a strategy to says enforce and post signage to discourage sidewalk writing or wrong way bicycle writing, can you first look and say, is there a reason why someone's writing on the sidewalk there. is it because there isn't an adequate on street bike lane that feels comfortable or an off street route or someone's going the wrong way is because like this is a clear desire line and a lot of people are doing it because there isn't a community way to cross the street there so a lot of that input and some of the modifications we've made to the language in the plan is not just to prohibit and sign illegal behaviors, but to see is there a solution that might allow a safe way to do what you're seeing someone do unsafe way rather than just prohibit it. And in some cases there might be. The Madonna Road Charities Path, we had a lot of people on that side of the street already riding in the sidewalk the wrong way. So we could continue just to enforce it and write tickets all day long, but adding that shared use path on that stretch in Madonna made a lot of sense, because now you're allowing people to do something they're already doing, but in a safe way without being a lawbreaker, which a lot of folks aren't intending to do. So I think that's more of the focus is like, if we have an issue with sidewalk writing or wrong way writing, is there a solution first to make it a legitimate way to make that safe or remove that behavior before we just enforce and prohibit it?

So you're looking at that behavior as kind of symptomatic that there's a problem that needs to be solved.

Oftentimes, I mean, you'll still see some folks that just don't know the rules and they're getting, maybe, you know, you have some folks in the campus community, it's maybe their first time using a bike for transportation and they're just getting from point A to point B. Maybe you haven't had that training and experience with other folks in town that I'm sure you'll see that. If they had a car, they'd be driving wild in a car too, but maybe they're just on a bike because that's their only means of transportation. But there's some just bad behavior. Enforcement education helps with that. But sometimes there's a behavior because that's the natural course that someone's taking because they feel safe and they're just trying to do what feels right. And there might be an infrastructure improvement that might help them do in a way that's safer and legal.

OK, well, I'm not sure that I am totally clear on your answer there, but it sounds to me like it's something to proceed cautiously with. Thank you. That's all I have for now.

Thank you. I really appreciate your clarity around the Broad Street project that I know that you're not involved in, but knowing that we just in our 5E connected with some funding to design the plans for next steps, I think that some of the members that have emailed us of the community that are concerned around Lawton and Funston, hopefully you know that we did approve that earlier today so that we can really work on those issues. This goes to, of course, further in the list of priorities, especially since it's past our town technically. But Los Ranchos is a school that students go to that live in our town. And so it didn't really make it in the list for, I think, logical reasons. But at some point, will that be included in the Safe Ride to Schools map as well?

Yeah, we actually do have improvements in our active transportation plan that extend beyond our boundaries, and they just get caught up and say, this isn't in our priorities, but we are supportive of helping these get done. Our St. Louis Municipal Council government, SLOCOG, our friends are actually pursuing grant funding as part of their 227 quarter improvements, which are looking at roundabouts at Los Ranchos, improved safety for everybody, and Buckley eventually. As part of that, they're also designing and trying to seek funding to add a shared use path that would feed into the Los Ranchos school and run it up 227 towards the city limits. So we've actually been talking with that with them on that recently and then looking as we prioritize our other bigger projects and following this south broad street quarter planning is how do we leverage other grant opportunities and things to continue slow cog and caltrans and the county's focus south of us to continue moving those investments up the 227 quarter into the city where we have folks that are going to those schools so yeah it is part of our our vision it might not be something we lead but we're collaborating with our partners on those types of things

Absolutely, thank you, and I just figured it'd be good to have that on on records I know we've talked about that before and something that it's kind of half of half of the path is within the city and half is not so Depending on where you live of course The other thing when we're talking about the emergency vehicles pre preemption systems. I know it's on the list And so I'm just trying to get back there So that 90,000 that's only for the three new intersections at you may not have the grand total but I'm just curious how many intersections we have in the city that do not have the preemption equipment and how much it would cost to have all of the intersections have this equipment sorry it's a good complicated for some reason for me to say because to me that's half the battle on its own is we should have I feel like every traffic signal where the emergency should have like the first priority and as I've seen on some other Ride-alongs it's not as though people just magically move out of the way even though there's large sirens and lights coming towards them so Just trying to figure that out

Yeah, so we have 71, 72 signals in town, if you're counting hybrid beacons, too. Anything we put in the last 15, 20 years, we've been putting in with that equipment. I'd say we have equipment currently at about 60% to 70% of the signals. without having an exact number. A lot of signals in the city limits that don't have the equipment currently are in the Caltrans right away. So that whole stretch of Highway 1 from Highland, Foothill, Murray, Olive, and that's also a priority corridor for our emergency response folks. And so that would be a targeted area where I think we'd get a lot of benefit investing. The estimates we have in there, I'd say are a little conservative, assuming like there's some additional costs and process with working through Caltrans through encouragement to install that equipment. But that's where we'd be focusing those energies on. And we might have signals that are in lower traffic streets that maybe won't have the same benefit in getting that equipment as like on the arterials. But not just getting basic equipment, but some of the locations even that might have existing kind of older style line of sight equipment. If there's big tree canopies or it's on a curve, they might not be as effective. And some of those locations might have some preemption equipment, but we might say this will work better if we get GPS where a fire truck can be coming from half a mile away and tell that signal upstream, hey, flush traffic out now. So yeah, I don't have a specific dollar amount of what it would take to get all the rest of the signals upgraded. We could certainly come back to the council if there's interest in like,

bigger capital project down the road to do something like that it's definitely down the road and I get that I just think that that would be a big to me a big priority because I think if we can flush traffic out of the way so we can get people safely in an emergency it's really important so thank you well everyone's already asked all my other questions so I'll move on to councilmember Shoresman

Thank you. Just a quick follow up on Council Member Marks and actually Mayor's questions about the softening of the recommendation or the softening language that the Active Transportation Committee asked about bike riding on sidewalks. They asked that we soften the recommendation of the plan regarding enforcement of illegal pedestrian crossings and runway and sidewalk riding by cyclists instead include considerations to first evaluate if design strategies are feasible to provide safe and legal opportunities to accommodate these desire lines. Did we make changes to the Vision Zero plan to accommodate that? Because I didn't see that language specifically. So where would I find that?

Sure. I think there are specific like location specific recommendations on one or multiple of the high injury network segments where the draft plan had a recommendation that, hey, we're seeing a pattern of wrong way riding leading to crashes. And maybe the initial recommendation was enforce and install signage to discourage wrong way riding where the final language was. do that if opportunities to provide a safe opportunity to ride correctly have been exhausted. So something along those lines. So it wasn't a blanket like systematic policy to go out and enforce all sidewalk riding or all wrong way riding. It was a location specific one where that comment came up. But I think the vision or the intent of that is something we would expand throughout is, is there a reason for a behavior that we're seeing and is there a way to address it through a design change before we just strictly enforce it or prohibit it?

OK, so that will be a part of our process going forward to kind of look at those places where that sort of thing is happening and see if there's another alternative before we automatically start enforcing more diligently, I guess.

Yeah, that's correct.

OK. And then following up on the mayor's question, This was something that that came up when I was looking through the with the preemptive vehicle, the emergency vehicle preemption upgrades in the staff report recommending $90,000 for these types of upgrades. And this $375,000 that we're talking about using for all these sort of small projects all wrapped up together, $370,000. Is that $375,000, refresh my memory, is that specifically Vision Zero action plan funding? So when I think of emergency vehicle preemption, To me, it seems like it's mostly a traffic moving tool, or it's a way for the emergency vehicles to either stop traffic so that they can get through or keep traffic moving more smoothly through the area so that they can get through. It doesn't feel like it's a Vision Zero expense to me, really. It doesn't seem like it's a tool that really protects pedestrians and bicyclists quite as much as it just protects everybody and keeps the emergency vehicles moving. So I'm curious why we're proposing using this source of funding that's very limited for that tool. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the purpose.

No, that is a good question. I'd say if we were putting our old school traffic safety program hat on, I'd say that's an emergency response thing. They can figure that stuff out. Looking at a safe systems approach, there's a couple of values to that. One is if you're a pedestrian or a bicyclist and you're hit in a crash, that you want an ambulance and fire truck to get there quickly, because that increases your chance of survival. Another benefit is for the emergency response drivers. If you're heading through and speeding through a corridor, it's much safer for you to have the conflicting streets get a red light and have you get a green light so that you're not risking a chance of hitting another car with a big fire truck and either hurting the other person or hurting your staff. And then the last part is sometimes these might things that help, advanced ability to do other street design changes. We're saying we want to do things that might slow traffic down or increase separation or protection for people on foot or on bike. And if the trade-off is that might add more friction to emergency response, a solution to help reduce those impacts might be to invest in equipment like this that can improve emergency response, even if you're maybe getting a little friction added from other design changes. So kind of shifting, trying to balance those priorities, I would say.

Okay, thank you so much.

I did forget one other question. You both kind of talked about the enforcement a little bit. There's been a lot of conversation around enforcement of the fast-going e-bikes, whether it's on a combined pedestrian bike Path that it's supposed to be on but maybe going too fast and or not being concerned by the pedestrian in front of them also unfortunately you know we may be taking a nice walk outside with our headphones on listening to something and don't even hear the little bell or on your left and So there's been accidents throughout the state. I know that at the Cal cities, meaning we were supporting the AB 1569, 1614, and 2346, trying to help lower the e-bike speeds. So for us at the city, do we run similar slow PD enforcement intense spaces for e-bikes like we do for certain streets that we see there's a lot of speeding on cars?

Yeah, and I'm sure Deputy Chief Schaffer could provide some more input on how they target enforcement. I know it's a big folks' error for them. And it's also a big challenge. A lot of folks have no idea, some cases, that whatever they bought for their kid that they're riding around is illegal and unsafe. But yeah, maybe.

Thank you. Well, thank you. I'd love to talk about your bikes. Obviously, it's a complicated subject, right? As Luke covers in his staff report, different types. I'm not going to go into details about what. They're all challenging, but there's obviously legal ones and there's illegal ones. We've also seen a significant increase throughout the city for the last two years. I'd say 2024, we saw the school age kids purchasing these. And I think there was a lot of lack of education during that process. We've spent hours with our SRO, actually, spending time at the middle school and talking to parents at the high school, talking to parents and the kids, informing them that they're illegal. We've done targeted enforcement in areas where we've seen issues. Madonna LOVR was one we spent a whole day out there and did directed enforcement. Unfortunately, they're really fast. And a lot of times it's hard for us to catch them. And so a lot of the times we're using other methods to identify them and having these conversations after the fact. So it creates a whole lot of challenge. And it's also educating the parents. that aren't aware that they're illegal. And so because of that, we've seen, there has been an increase in collisions regarding e-bikes over the last two years. It's gone up a few from 24 to 25. I don't have those specific numbers in front of me. Unfortunately, we had a fatal accident, or not a fatal, but a pretty serious injury accident a few days ago with a young kid riding an e-bike. That was, I can't remember what class it was. It was a class two, it wasn't a class three e-bike. And unfortunately, you know, He had significant injuries and is being treated. And last I heard, he's expected to recover. So besides that, we've done, I mean, our traffic team has gone out there and done specific enforcement. As you know, our traffic team, when I got here 15 years ago, was five officers, and now it's two. We have slotted for three, but unfortunately, it's one of our vacancies and one of our specialty units. And so right now, we have two motor officers that are specifically there to do enforcement. Obviously the rest of our officers as well do traffic enforcement, but unfortunately they're going call to call and handling other issues and emergencies throughout the city. We've also done social media messaging. We've linked some of his, I don't know if you've been on Luke's page, but what is it, Rolls and, I don't even know, I can't remember the name of it, sorry. But it's e-bike safety, and it's actually really thorough, and we've used that as social media several months ago, and trying pushing information out when we were having these issues, and we'll continue to do that. Continue to educate because I think that's the biggest thing right now is what we're finding is people uneducated I think some of these laws that you mentioned are going to hopefully help and Put it out to the community and the state that this is not okay Thank you, I appreciate that councilman remarks yes, I have a question for the police officer there What what?

Category of e-bike has to go on the road. I mean I At what point?

So there's a speed limit. They aren't, and I'm not a traffic guru, to be honest with you. Luke may know, but it's.

So, yeah, so, I mean, if it only goes 28 miles an hour, then it's under the speed limit, or?

No, so there's different rules, because if they're riding in the bike lane, there's different speed limits for the bike lane.

Right. And at what point can you not go in the bike lane? You have to go in the road like a car.

So if it's a class one and it's a legal bike, you see these a lot in open space, like guys that have mountain bikes that are pedal assisted that have an electronic assist. Otherwise, any of those class two and three are completely illegal to be on the street. They're completely illegal to be ridden on the sidewalk, completely illegal to be on the street.

So they have to be, the bike lane is the only place they can go.

They are not allowed, if it's a class two or three, they're not allowed to be anywhere, not even in the bike lane. So there are some legal, street legal bike assisted or pedal assisted that are allowed to be in the bike lane, but most are not allowed in the bike.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, I think that's all the questions we have at this point. So we move on to public comment. And if you didn't have a chance, this is your last chance to make sure you get in a slip over here. Assistant City Manager has these half yellow sheets and then you put your name on it and tell us what you'd like to talk about. So if you could put your name on that. And City Clerk, how many speakers do we have?

Right now we only have two.

Okay.

So the first one is Desi Lance and then Beth Leibovich.

Thank you.

Hello, Council. I'm Desi Lance. I live at the corner of Lawton and Funston. I am very aware that South Broad Corridor is coming up on your agenda soon, but I know the importance of public input. I was on City Council in Grover, and I'm on the Parks and Rec Commission here, so I will take this opportunity to voice my concerns as a resident of the city um the reason it's relative to this agenda item is because it's a block off of a high injury network segment we're right off broad um one of the um recommendations on page 25 i think of the zero action plan is to turn the right red light as a no right turn onto Broad from South. In my opinion, that's going to make the backup on South be even more concerning, which then could make the issue in our neighborhood even more problematic. with people cutting through to go around the south and broad intersection. There were two fatalities on broad at Woodbridge and Cottle in the last several years. I do not know what the intention of those drivers were, but I know some of them did involve a left turn into our neighborhood. and it could be assumed again not sure that they potentially were maybe avoiding the woodbridge bicycle pedestrian crossing sometimes when those lights go on people are like oh i don't want to wait for that i'm going to cut through the neighborhood because i can leave Broad, go on Woodbridge, go all the way over to South without hitting a stop sign or any other kind of calming measure. So yes, obviously we want calming measure, traffic calming measures in our neighborhood, but I think it's more aligned with what you're talking about when it comes to where fatalities happening, where are people trying to get away from the traffic, and it is unfortunately happening in our neighborhood. We have lots of children on our corner. I have one. Obviously, there's children all over the city. That's a priority. We're by a park, so there's a lot of action from there. And so I just wanted to put it to your attention. Again, we'll be back for when it's time to discuss planning for the South Broad corridor. section but people are zooming through our neighborhood really really fast and it's scary for us as residents but also we kind of know what they're trying to avoid and we can put ourselves in their brain and what they're trying to do and i would just discourage you from approving the user action plan with that right making that a no right turn because i think it would make our problem even worse so thank you for your time and consideration and that's it

Thank you very much.

Beth Leibovich? And then Steve Jarrett.

Yeah, hi. Beth Leibovich. I live behind the Concert Fuel at South and Broad. And so you got a lot of emails from our neighbors today because we are all pretty aligned on the issue that's happening there, which is between the hours of 3 and 6.30 usually, we get a lot of cars that hit that red light, and they don't want to be at that red light. They got somewhere to be. So they take a right. at that gas station, and then they beeline it up Funston, which is where myself and Desi live, and it gets pretty scary, especially when it's darker at night. We got a lot of kids walking to Hawthorne Elementary School in the area. We have a lot of bikers because we've encouraged bikers to go through our neighborhood, which we're stoked about, and we love that crosswalk that you put at Broad. But it means that those drivers that are driving so fast are really putting people's lives in danger. And so I'm very much in favor of this report. It's amazing. Just congrats to everybody who worked on it. Our town has gotten much bigger in the last 16 years since I've been here and a lot more traffic and we're doing really great things. I think that we would just beg you to consider anything you can do for the Meadow Park neighborhood in general. I've taken some video of people. I've put a video in my car to see how many cars go by and they get up to like 50 miles an hour on just a two block street. So it's scary for us with kids. Some things that we would ask you to consider would be Yeah, we want those speed bumps, a rotary or a traffic circle. We would welcome that. We would welcome like prohibiting people to take a right turn during certain hours into the neighborhood, like no through traffic is something we would welcome. Even just getting some of those speed signs. I know that one of them's broken, but we would do that. And I think also just like we have a very... a really good community in in this neighborhood i think that we would even like fundraise to help make it happen because we care so deeply about the area that we live in and we love it so um yeah anything you can do to help us stop people from speeding through the street uh it makes sense like they're just trying to get to where they're going but it's it's causing problems so thank you very much thank you

Steve Jarrett.

Thank you for the chance to speak. I'm a pedestrian and a cyclist in San Luis Obispo and a resident. Our transportation manager here mentioned something that struck me, and he said the phrase illusion of safety. And this is something that I think is very important for the council to consider, which is that there can be an illusion of safety, and then there can actually be a confidence in safety. Also, an illusion of convenience or an actual convenience or an illusion of enjoyment and actual enjoyment. And for St. Louis Obispo, I would hope that we get beyond just the illusion of each of those things and actually begin to feel safe, our children feel safe, that I feel safe as a senior person here who uses the streets daily, both pedestrian and a cyclist. and that all of the decisions that you make moving forward, take that into account, that we move away from the motorist is the only and most important person using public roads to everybody using those. Also, I strongly support Vision Zero. I have seen Vision Zero implemented in a variety of cities over the past decade and a half. In every case it has helped reduce deaths and injuries. In every case it has helped improve actual safety. One of the things that I would ask of our transportation folks is to take a stronger look at what creates actual safety and get away from some of the piecemeal approach that happens here in the city. A good example is, just around the corner when I was leaving one of the government buildings, within a half a block, there's an impediment in the bike lane that would cause folks to actually crash if they didn't know it was there, and 15 feet later, the bike lane magically disappears into cars that are going to turn right. I see this all over the city. So if we can actually take a look at the infrastructure, then there will be less stress on pedestrians and cyclists. There will be less legal violations because they're not feeling safe, and I think you'll start to see a greater participation in those types of transportation. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other speakers?

I have one speaker who is insisting on speaking, but it's not on this item. It's on an item not on the agenda.

Oh, OK. So for public comment next time. Got it. Thank you.

May I just say something? I'm Christy Lynch.

Ma'am, this is only for items that are on the vision zero plan. So we had in the beginning of the meeting for items that are not on the agenda. So I'm very sorry that this is not the time for you to speak. But we do have another meeting on June 2. And so you can speak about anything that's not on the agenda at that time. Not about this right now. We're on the Vision Zero plan, but thank you very much. There was a time that you could have spoken earlier in the meeting. I'm very sorry. But we have had many, many, many, I'm sorry, many emails on that, and you're welcome to email us because we do see those. Okay. Thank you very much. So we're going to continue our meeting. Thank you so much. So at this point, we have done the public comment. Did you have anything that you would like to add for any of the comments on the Vision Zero plan? Luke or Dana. OK, thank you. And city manager.

Thank you. I would like to maybe ask Deputy Chief Schaffer to come up and provide a little bit of clarity on the e-bike questions because that would be great.

Thank you.

Unfortunately, I grouped e-motorcycles into the class three. So I just want to circle back with you guys on class one and class two. I'm not going to go into the, again, complicated and it's ever evolving and so I just wanted to hit on that class one two and three there are some exemptions most of those rules have to do with age and also whether you're required to wear a helmet or not and obviously the one two and three speeds get faster as you change classes so apologize for the confusion earlier but I was really referring to motorcycles which is what I know a lot of us were talking about as far as the high speeds thank you

Yes, Council Member Schwarzman.

Thanks. So just to clarify, the Class 1 and Class 2 that have either pedal assist or throttle and pedal assist but only go up to like 28, I think. Oh, no, 20. 20. 20. Those are allowed on bike paths and bike lanes. For kids, you would need to wear a helmet legally by law. Adults, not so much. Still a good idea, but not so much required, correct?

Yeah, class three, I think, class three adults are required to wear a helmet.

Yes, class three adults are required to wear a helmet. Those are the ones that go a little bit faster and are not allowed on bike paths, but are allowed on the street. Yes. Okay, thank you. Sorry about that.

Thank you for the clarification, all. And can you clarify, Luke or Dana, I feel like I had an idea. I thought it was clear and then after the public comment I maybe wasn't as clear. So we do have some speed cushions planned already for parallel to Broad Street now in the current plan. Is that correct?

We don't have any physical traffic calming currently planned or designed parallel to Broad Street. With that said, that's a key focus area of the Broad Street planning effort. When that comes to the council on the 2nd to authorize us to procure a consultant to help work on the planning study, the council could certainly entertain direction to staff if there's interest in advancing or accelerating things like that. But again, I'm not involved in the project, so that would be a conversation for you and other staff that will be here to talk about.

Thank you, sorry, I thought there was some of that that was already planned and so I wanted to make sure. All right, so I was confused and thank you for the clarification. Vice Mayor.

I just wanted to ask a really quick legal question of our city attorney over there. If I were to speak about something that might potentially involve the Broad Street corridor but is specifically on south and only concerns that right hand turn onto Broad, am I allowed to bring that up in deliberations or because it will touch that potential future project, am I needing to recuse myself?

I don't know the answer to that as I sit here right now.

OK. Just because there were some requests from the public to give some feedback on that particular item, I didn't want to either ignore it if I didn't need to or weigh in and get myself into some trouble there.

I don't know the distance of the improvement or the area that you're referring to from your home. One half mile. So I don't know how to evaluate.

It's one half mile.

Oh, OK. Then I think we're fine.

But it touches the corridor that I'm recusing from. So I just wanted to make sure it was clear.

I think if you're talking about a specific intersection at a greater distance from your home that doesn't have a potential impact on the value of your home. Appreciate it. Thank you. My assessment on the fly would be that that should be fine. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Council Member Shoresman.

Yeah, one last question for Luke. Sorry, this gets all very complicated and you brought up the Broad Street corridor plan and we had the public comment on Lawton and Fenston. So I just wanted to clarify when we start doing the Broad Street Safe Streets corridor plan, It could involve some planning and feedback efforts around probably that Funston Meadow Park area, some of those streets, as well as potentially streets because there is sort of a low stress street on the other side of Broad. I can't remember. It's Victoria, I think, is the name of the street that is parallel to that. So those two low-stress corridors could be part of the discussion of that project. Is that correct, that overall scope?

that's right okay thank you although too just in response to the public comment if there's locations where there might be um negative consequences of like a right turn on red restriction those wouldn't be locations we would want to be prioritizing until there's other measures that might pre-mitigate those issues before we would do something like that so that likely wouldn't be a location we'd be prioritizing the short term until there's more thought on strategies to manage neighborhood traffic in that neighborhood so we're not making the problem worse than it is now

Can I follow up with that? Yeah, absolutely. So I guess when I look at the pedestrian bike crossing signage to install warning regulatory signage, et cetera, et cetera, left-right turn yields, is there in that it's installed at 10 to 15 new locations, do we need to prioritize within those 10 to 15 new locations as well?

That's right.

So it's an estimated number. I'm not saying we're going to do 14 and not 15 or whatnot, but that would be an example where we would want to hear more input from the Active Transportation Committee and the community on where are you seeing close calls to supplement our data. The other projects that are short-term, modifying a traffic signal where there's a vehicle-on-vehicle crash, that might not be a project where we say, hey, Active Transportation Committee, is this your top priority? Because it's still a safety priority. But locations that do affect pedestrian and bicycle travel, that would be a good spot for us to get that input on how we prioritize that. We don't have a list right now of 15 locations ranked top to bottom yet.

Thank you because that's what I was trying to ask earlier about. Like, how are you going to go about deciding where this limited amount of money is prioritized? Are you looking for direction from us? Are you going to get that from the ATC? Like, should we providing should we be providing you that now or.

I don't know that we'd be looking to iron out the list tonight. But I'd say either tonight or in the future, if you're hearing things from your constituents, that might be a location worth that we should be focusing on too. We're happy to hear it. But that would be an item. Again, we're bringing this plan again to the Active Transportation Committee. I think we're scheduling for July. We brought it to them earlier. And there aren't huge substantial changes from when they last saw it. But bring it back again to say, this is what's approved. And that would be an item that would be a good time for us to get input on that short-term priority.

Okay, awesome. Thank you Thank you very much. I appreciate that because that was I didn't really think about the priority aspect of the locations I assumed we were not part of that today, but then all sudden it made me wonder about that Okay, so it sounds like of the priority items There are some key items that short of that first section where it talks about traffic signal modification on high injury network, we have some three key locations identified. But in a lot of the work below in the bottom half of the traffic, I'm sorry, bottom half of the table, the actual locations are not exactly clear. Is that correct?

yes i'd say the only caveat would be where we'd be focusing on potential speed limit reductions like we would start with the high injury network and then any other streets that we have like speeds over 35 miles an hour okay so those would be more specific and as many locations that we can reasonably fund and look at within that time frame we'd start with okay thank you sorry for the clarification needs i thought i had it and then questioned myself council member shoresman

Yeah, I was going to go ahead and try to start deliberations, if you all are okay with that, and wondered if you all could put the slide back up with you. You had a few questions that you wanted us to answer. I have some general comments, but if you have specific questions, I want to make sure I hit those.

Sure, it was just kind of three maybe potential areas of discussion in terms of like, does the current plan missing anything? Do you have? Oh.

It was like are you okay with the administrative changes and then something else I can't remember. Okay.

Oh, yes. So if you have interest in changing the plan title, I do have some options You might worth we were talking about but I could pull up a slide if you looking for inspiration The other in and if you want to change the title of the plan, we'd want to make sure that's captured in the final motion So we change our resolution and approve the final document with that change coming there That was just if the administrative edits we've identified in the agenda correspondence are suitable to you we'd like to make sure those get captured in any final approval to I

Right. Okay.

I'd love to see that slide, by the way, the name slide.

Oh, okay. Yeah, you can pull that up if you want later. Let me just start with these because I don't want to forget the things that are highlighted in red. I don't have a strong feeling about the name of the plan in that I think that Vision Zero, as staff has requested, should still be part of it, whether it's, you know, before the colon or after the colon, so to speak, because I do think that I will fully admit that Vision Zero is a somewhat jargony term for people who are kind of in the active transportation and traffic safety world, but not everybody understands what that term means. But I do think it's an important term. I think both can be true that, you know, you might need something that's a little simpler and we need to make sure we stay focused on Vision Zero and what the zero actually means because it's important. So I'm willing to entertain other ideas as long as we don't wordsmith too much here on the dais because that gets painful. I'm okay with the administrative edits for the most part. Those all make sense, and I think some of them are based on comments that I made during my earlier briefing with staff, so I appreciate those. the implementation priorities. Are there specific projects Council would like to prioritize over others? I think in general the categories that you've come up with are valid. I appreciate the differentiation between some of the specific areas like Grand and Monterey, LLVR and Descanso and Tang Farm and Long places that we have already identified where there are locations where we can do some quick, relatively inexpensive changes to hopefully make things a little bit safer. I do think it would be a good idea to go back to the Active Transportation Committee, maybe, and get some suggestions on some of the other improvements in other areas. I'll just mention one area where I use frequently, and I don't know if it's possible to do a no right turn on red there, but Foothill in California, as you're going from Foothill to California, there is a high level of pedestrian traffic there with students mostly in various stages of paying attention to what's going on as they cross that intersection with earbuds in. and what have you. And I am perpetually stopping at that intersection and not going red on right, turning on to California because I'm afraid that a student will walk out into the roadway as I'm starting to turn. So I don't know if that's an area because of the traffic or because of the railroad crossing there, if that's possible to consider. But if it is, I would recommend that be one of the places that we consider. Um, I don't know if you want to respond to that.

Yeah, I just have some you haven't seen an update for a while because we've been dealing working with the railroad for multiple years. But we have a project in design that's far along for that intersection that will include providing a scramble bike and pet only crossing with big no right blank out signs.

Okay.

But there are some concerns other outside of the pedestrian crossing times. We don't want to prevent people from clearing off of the tracks. So we still like we have right turns on red when there's no pedestrian or bike crossings. But just simplifying all the conflicts here. Now, the challenge is getting final approval from the railroad and getting to where we can deliver that project. So we're hoping that would come up one of these upcoming summers. But that is in progress.

OK, I would. Yeah, whatever we can do to make that a little less scary for drivers and pedestrians would be wonderful. I also think it would be great, you know, on our list of possible things that we track if we can track those right hand on red collision points. I I just have a sense that there's a lot of. maybe minor fender benders and issues on some of our right turn intersections. So it would be, I'd be curious to know what that data actually looks like if my intuition is correct or not about the danger of those areas.

Can I ask you a question with that? Yeah. So

How would that be gathered from an accident that didn't happen? Would it just be like if you've almost been hit, Texas?

I think it would be some of the close call data or the actual collision data that occurs from those types of circumstances, just like they were able to outline pretty much the circumstances of every collision that caused a a major or severe accident or fatality, they seem to be able to gather the circumstances of each collision pretty closely. Is that not data that you feel like you could get?

We can.

Maybe not always, but...

We'll just take a process. So maybe we start with like our severe injury crashes involving a pet or bike and see which ones involved a turning conflict. And then we'll have to dig through like the crash report to see if that was the instance where someone was turning on a right turn on red. Getting through all the rest of the crashes will just take more time because unfortunately it's not something we can quickly like query that's in like the metadata on its own.

Right.

But referencing spots where we've had maybe crash history with our input map and it's like, oh, yeah, we've got 10 comments on that same spot saying this happens a lot. That would be kind of how we'd inform those decisions.

And I wouldn't even propose I don't want to create a lot of extra work for folks i'm just thinking, maybe even just. prospectively like you know, starting at some point now looking for that piece of data when we can not necessarily going back to every collision over the last five years and trying to determine if. If that's the circumstance that occurred so just another future data point, maybe, is what i'm more thinking and. Otherwise, I think this is a really great report, not on a great subject. It's really unfortunate to read that 11% of our road miles account for 80% of our fatal and severe collisions. That statistic really struck me. But I appreciate the way the report was done. I think any sort of feedback I provide right now is just, you know, nibbling around the edges, so to speak. I think that you all did a really good job of digging into the details and trying to make things as clear as possible. I appreciated the list of individuals. at the beginning of the report naming all the people whose lives have been lost due to traffic collisions, and it's not good, especially considering the fact that we've had this Vision Zero goal for several years now and things are clearly going in the wrong direction, so we need to do something a little bit. We need more. I also like the idea of the annual data collection. I understand coming back and revising the plan every five years seems reasonable, but I do like the ability to see the updates in the data more frequently than that. So I appreciate that you're proposing to do that. And then I would like to see us I don't know what this looks like. Not in this plan. I think the plan is fine as is. I'm prepared to support it as is, but I would love to see some further analysis at some point, even if it's just a memo outlining some potential ways that we could Soften, I think, as Council Member Marks used in the Active Transportation Committee used for the rules around riding on sidewalks, whether it's in some specific locations where there really is no infrastructure or just in marked locations. I'm curious about the other communities that have implemented some form of legal riding on sidewalks. At the same time, I recognize that we don't want to make the sidewalks less safe for pedestrians. That's definitely not the goal here. The goal is to make more continuous network and places where it just doesn't dump, the sidewalk or the road doesn't just dump you off into the middle of nowhere. So that would be my goal. I think that's all for now, but thank you very much, so much for the work.

Thank you. Council Member Boswell.

Thank you. First, I want to start out by thanking staff, particularly Luke and Dana, for this excellent Vision Zero plan. This is when I first got it last year, I was like, all right, let's get into this thing. And I've got all my 20 ideas and I can't wait to dig in. I kept going, oh, My idea is in here already. Oh, my idea is in here already. I was like, wow, this is, I'm good. Let's go. Let's adopt it. Fortunately, it took us this long to get there, but I'm glad we're here today. So thank you for doing the great work of putting together a very good Vision Zero plan for us. I also want to thank the public for their we had a lot of agenda correspondence it was once again it was one of those were I think yesterday afternoon it was just like clicking in ding ding ding and and particularly a lot of personal stories in those emails of particular experiences people have had out there walking biking or even in their cars experiencing you know, the dangers and challenges in some of our street networks. So I appreciate everyone sharing the stories and sharing ideas for how we can make improvements. So let's see. First, just a few kind of general things. I mean, this plan is really important. If these deaths and injuries were occurring through any other form of violence, 22 in five years, it'd be red alert in San Luis Obispo. Building collapses were killing 22 people a year. or some other infrastructure failure was killing 22 people in five years, we wouldn't tolerate it. And for some reason in society we've become all too numb and too willing to accept deaths on our roadways. Most of Europe is seeing deaths going down on their roadways. The U.S. continues to see deaths go up on our roadways. It's unacceptable, and so we have to do something. So I'm very glad that in this community we're taking an affirmative step to try to eliminate and eliminate those deaths. It's also interesting that, you know, compared to some of the things we addressed, this is a fairly well-defined problem. We know where the problems are, and we've got the great data on it, and we know generally what is happening. We generally know why these are occurring. And I want to point out that, and it's very prominent in the report, it's two words, it says speed kills. And so I want to acknowledge that when we look at what's happening on the streets, so much of this traffic violence can be attributed to speeding. And so I just plead with people in this community to slow down. A couple other things I wanted to mention is that I think if we, I would urge us not to try to deal with the e-bike challenge, which is really primarily an e-motorcycle problem, not really an e-bike problem. which are already illegal to operate in many cases. So we have the laws on the book. But the legislature is extremely active this season. There are a whole bunch of bills. There are some very bad ones, by the way. Personally, I'm supporting SB 1167. That's Cal Bike is supporting that piece of legislation. I think that's the best one out there. If it does pass, it will provide some additional clarity. for local governments and for enforcement and will also hold manufacturers accountable for selling a safer product, which is a big part of the problem. But I think we ought to hold off on trying to do anything further locally until the legislature gives us some better clarity and better tools on how to deal with the law. That might be something we want to take up or take a look at after this legislative session is concluded. And the sidewalk issue, I think if we're going to, I mean, that's a municipal code issue. It's not really addressed in this plan, so it's really a separate item. I think if there's any interest in doing anything further, I think I would maybe simply suggest that we ask the ATC to consider the issue. I don't think we should do a lot of work on it, realizing that there may not be sufficient support for changing anything from what we've done. I appreciate Councilmember Schor's comments on the right on red issue. At that very intersection leaving campus today, I experienced what I call the bullying behavior, where the right on red motorist begins to inch forward and even starts to turn, pulls right up to the crosswalk and bullies the pedestrians. And then you'll see some of the pedestrians get scared. They start running, see this behavior constantly, all the time, every day, this bullying behavior in these intersections. And right on red isn't going to work in every situation. I mean, this is a complicated one with the railroad. I'm glad we've got some plans to move forward there. But I am happy to see that we are continuing to look at places where we can do additional right on red prohibitions to reduce that bullying behavior. I really only have like two things I want to suggest for changes. I'm the one who suggested the name change. I've been bringing this up. The Swedes came up with the idea of Vision Zero several decades ago. Hooray for the Swedes, great idea. I don't know if they're great at marketing, though. It's a wonky name. I've talked to many people in the community, and I said, hey, you know, the Vision Zero plan is coming up, and they're like, what, the what? what is Vision Zero? And I'm like, well, it's about making our streets safer. Oh, yeah, I support that. Right? Everybody understands that. So my feeling has been that we try to, you know, when we can get away from kind of this wonky language and just say what we mean, I'm not you know, I'm not going to make too big a deal out of this. If we don't want to change the title, could we at least have the subtitle, whichever side of the colon, as Council Member Shorson suggested, that we say something like safe streets for everyone or safe streets for all or safe streets for slow. I'm sort of ambivalent, but I would like safe streets in there somehow to communicate what this plan is about. So I'm open to either way, although I would like to change the title and then have the subtitle be a Vision Zero plan. So that would be my preference. The only other, I think everything else I'm fine with, fine with the admin changes that staff has suggested. On the list of priorities, I don't really have any changes here. You kind of answered well in the agenda correspondence I said on this item, which is when we're thinking about where we might do those list of things where we haven't prioritized every project, I would simply suggest that we do look a little more closely at areas around schools. So where we have particularly high injury network around schools that we maybe think about pushing some of those projects up a little further. I do think we could maybe prioritize a little bit more of the physical infrastructure improvements that you're suggesting over some of those traffic studies which are also suggested in there and so I don't know that I need to change anything now because I think your current recommendations are flexible enough and I was happy to hear this go back to the ATC who really, I think, is the appropriate body to do some of the detailed work. But I would just ask that, you know, if we're looking at where do we do the next set of, you know, looking at right on red or looking at speed signs or things like that, that we do try to, you know, look at school areas on the high injury network. Let's see. Did I get all my points? I think so. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Yeah, thank you very much. First of all, yay. This is really exciting. It feels like sort of the magic wand list of all of the things that you would hope to change. And so it's exciting to have it all in front of us at once. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all of your hard work on this. Fully supportive, obviously, and just absolutely thrilled how I wasn't expecting this much of our community to come out in support with the number of correspondence we got. I was really surprised, and it was awesome. You know, Councilmember Boswell mentioned the stories that we heard over and over again, As somebody whose family navigates the city daily by bike and daily on foot and almost daily by car, we have all the same kinds of stories. My daughter got her bike trailer almost knocked over, bumped into by a car pulling out. My husband got his foot run over in a marked crosswalk on a green light for him and we have near daily Near misses. And so, you know, I think we we share the same stories and concern that we just need to do better as a community. I was really glad that you ended with your discussion of school zones, because in getting into the priority list, I really you have that little thing on there about the new state law allowing us to drop speed in school zones. Was it 15 or 20 miles per hour? And as much as we can prioritize getting in there, and I know we've talked a lot about how dropping speed limits doesn't change behavior necessarily, but I think in school zones with additional marking and amplification of that, we might be able to make a little bit of a difference. So in any way we can prioritize that without taking things off of the high injury network list, I would love to see that. There was a question, discussion earlier about reforming neighborhood request process because it is quite cumbersome and challenging. I don't want us to spend too many staff resources on reforming that, but if there's a place where it makes sense to look at that, then I would be in favor of potentially reexamining and reforming that process. There has been a little bit of a mention here about the softening of the sidewalk riding. And I've been really hesitant because I know that that sort of invites in some potential liability. And so I want to be really cautious that we're really weighing, you know, if we invite people to come onto the sidewalks, are we inviting potential accidents and injuries there? I want to be careful, but also I do know, and we've talked a little bit about some of the geographically isolated places in our community. I happen to live near one, so I won't mention it. But there are places where you wouldn't send your kid out because there is no way for them to get anywhere except for on the sidewalk. And if they're on bike trying to go to school, there's no other way for them to go except for potentially on the sidewalk. And I know we're not doing enforcement right now, but I'm sure there are people that aren't children that are just not choosing to navigate on their bikes because there is no safe route for them. And so just kind of examining the legal pitfalls here and making sure that if we do move forward with that, we do it really cautiously. But I would be open to having active transportation continue that conversation. Since we're putting in plugs for specific spots that might need a little bit of additional infrastructure, a pedestrian, a no right turn on pedestrian signal at that turn from Orcut on to Broad. Of course, want to make sure it's data driven and not causing any additional problems and not knocking anything else off the list. But man, that feels so dangerous because it's that uphill they can't quite see and people just are looking left and then gunning it straight into you. I've had so many near misses there. And coming to the rename discussion, that was not on my radar, but I liked it as soon as I saw it because it does feel a little wonky, I think as somebody said. And I loved the, oh gosh, it's safe streets for all, a Vision Zero plan idea, just retaining both of those things. And it feels good to me if that's good with everybody else. There was a recommendation from one of our public speakers about continuity. And I think as our project network expands, that's gonna solve a lot of those problems, but really just being mindful of kind of transitions from one type of safety infrastructure to another. And I know we're taking all that into consideration, but that's probably one of the number one complaints I hear from pedestrians and bike users is that, You know, it's knowing what to expect from area to area in the city is really important to them. And we do have not only some gaps right now, but some changes in how we mark the infrastructure and being really clear in that would be fantastic. And today, the list is gone.

Did I get to everything there? Can we go back to that?

I'm good with the minor administrative edits, and I think I voiced my couple of little pet projects there, so I will pass it on to the next person.

Can I ask you a question about the Orkut and Broad, which I fully disagree with? Are you saying that if someone's pressed the crosswalk button, then have one of those no turn on right? But if there's no one at the crosswalk, you want people to not turn right?

Yes, to be absolute.

Oh, sorry. Hold on a second.

To be clear, I know that there would be queuing issues if we had a no right on red, so what I'm recommending there is we have a few places in the city where if somebody's pushed the crosswalk button, there's no right turn when there is a pedestrian present.

Then I'm cool with it. Thank you so much. Okay, council remarks.

Thank you. Well, first of all, I want to say this was really a comprehensive plan, and I know it's been a long time in the making. I'm very happy to see it at this stage. I agree about prioritizing safety near schools. I think that's really important. And I'll go back to the softening, riding bicycles on sidewalks. I think as a pedestrian, I really think it's a bad idea to prioritize bike riding over pedestrians. And the Active Transportation Committee is supposed to also consider pedestrians. I'm not sure. I haven't seen much interest in that myself from reading the minutes and the agendas and all that it seems to be. still the bike committee as far as i can tell um but i i will say that if If it turns out that there are places that temporarily could be painted green on the sidewalk, and I'm specifically thinking of South Street and Broad, when for certain times of the day, there is no place for a bicycle to go except into traffic or on the sidewalk. And I'm at that corner a lot, so with my car. And so I noticed they're the bike here. They're hopping onto the sidewalk. So if they are doing that, either painting it green, I'm talking about specific locations as a way of trying to maybe temporarily heal some of this continuity problem that we have where there's just no, no choice. Um, another place that that happens a lot is, uh, um, Gosh, right there by the donut shop. Yeah, all the places where cars stack up and obscure the bike path. It's like, what are they supposed to do? You know, so if it's specific, and if it's something that isn't just a blanket, oh, it's okay. I really don't like that.

Put that in the minutes.

No.

Anyway, I do think that prioritizing schools, anything having to do with schools or including Cal Poly, you know, that Improving that bike path railroad safety bicycle trails a big passion of mine's gone on for years, but now what's happened is exactly what you're talking about that whole herd of pedestrians that's going going through there and People complain about oh it takes so long well people need to just slow down I agree anything you can do to slow down traffic throughout the whole city is Important I would like to see some of progress made in what's been called the Meadow Park area. I think that that's really important. We didn't get into this in detail today, but excuse me. The pedestrian safety signal that's there at King and South, My clear impression is that it has improved safety there. But that whole area, especially with children going to Hawthorne and all that, is still somewhat problematic. So in terms of prioritizing, I would say with any of these unspecified categories, if you can try to help out that neighborhood, that would be great. In terms of the title, I sort of like Vision Zero. I think it's sort of Swedish, as you said. But you could do Vision Zero colon safe streets for all, and then people would know what that meant. So there is some value in knowing what we're talking about here. In terms of the money, We've got almost $11,000 that's unallocated here in that we have $375,935, but the projects only add up to $365,000. So with that extra $10,000, I'd like to see that added to the traffic signal emergency vehicle preemption upgrades if $10,000 would make a difference in that. I think that that's really important. And it's not necessarily that people won't get out of the way. People panic and they don't know what to do. So I think that having clarity, and I'd like to see the, The new fire chief, as well as the police, get involved in prioritizing which signals are we talking about? And, you know, also in terms of the ambulance is getting to the hospitals. I just want to make sure. So I like the crosswalk daylighting enforcement or improvement. I think that's great, despite what the new times might think about it. And let's see, what else do we have here? Yeah, going back to the Lawton Function thing, on Johnson, we do have signs that say no cut through traffic, no cutting through the neighborhood. And if we could just put up some of those signs, I think that that might be helpful if people just realize that they shouldn't do that. And I think outside of that, Those are all my comments. I really again, thank everyone and the public response was fantastic. It's really powerful. So thanks a lot.

Thank you. Yes, first and foremost, I agree. Thank you so much to staff for doing all of this. It's intense work. And thank you to the ATP. And thank you to the community. Sorry, ATC. Sorry, I always do that. And thank you to the community. We did. We received a great deal of comments. And I appreciate, as always, even we get comments in the grocery store, on the bike path today, Councillor Boswell. received a comment. So we receive them everywhere, and we take them everywhere, and we appreciate it. I don't know that we have any ability to affect Waze or Maps, but along with the neighborhood sign concept, I mean, part of it is you're on Maps, you're on Waze, whether it's Google or Apple or Waze. They're going to tell you the easiest way to get somewhere. And I've been in many communities that it tells me go this way instead. So I think as we have any option or any ability to change that, I think that would be really great. I don't know that we do, but I'm just going to add that in there. I think I've already said it, but Anything we can do for safe routes to schools, all of the schools, it helps everybody, not just the students. I mean, it helps everyone to really get around this entire city, no matter whether they are walking or rolling in some way, shape, or form, and also with their vehicles. So I just think that that is helpful for all. I appreciate the name change idea. I like the Vision Zero colon before or after the colon is fine with me because I do think that sometimes the wonky terms are helpful for grants or legislation and advocacy. And I hate to be a... Naysayer on the so far enjoyed name, but I I feel there's a couple things I feel like San Luis Obispo should be named out in the plan not slow We are trying to get people to go slow But that is our city and while in the local terms, we love the name slow outside of our world People are like what is wrong with you all? The other thing is I think that traffic safety plan would make the most sense because we're talking about traffic of all different types whether it's pedestrians or cyclists or strollers or vehicles because I think we have road paving and I think it could get really easily confused between road paving versus traffic safety. The other thing is I will say that A through C When we talk about safe streets, slow being safe, who do we mean it's safe for? And I will say that people of diversity don't always feel safe on our streets. And so I feel this could get into a world that we're not trying to get into. We're just trying to talk about traffic safety. So I think we should stick with that. I think that the Broad and South fully agree. When that starts to queue up, I am very nervous for cyclists. And I think same with South Higuera and South. So I think that if we're able to put on the, if you've pressed the crosswalk, then it's a no right turn, kind of like we changed in Orchid in Sacramento. But when it went to automatically no red, we just had queuing problems all around. So I just want to make sure that we're not getting rid of one thing and making another problem. So just want to be sure. aware of that. I don't know if it's 10,000 or what amount, but I really feel that the emergency vehicle preemption systems should be on as many signals as possible. Sometimes people do freeze out of scaredness. Sometimes people think they can get faster than the fire engine. And so whatever it may be, I just want to make sure we are clearing the roads as quickly and smoothly as possible for all safety needs. I'm torn on the conversation around e-bikes and bikes on sidewalks. I think we have multi-use paths that are great over by Madonna and Ralph's, over by ORCA heading to the multi-use railroad safety trail also. And then there gets to be that weird little spot where you're supposed to dismount your bike and walk, and people don't do that. So I get it. There are spots where you're like, could we just please continue riding on that I don't know how many feet that is just to get to the other part of the path but I don't love the idea of bikes e-bikes or bikes on sidewalks willy-nilly because the safety of pedestrians is constantly brought to me as what has happened to a friend, what has happened to themselves, what has happened to people they've seen online. It's a concern. And like I said, I see people with their headphones and they don't have a clue that someone is coming near them. That's how we've seen loss on the train tracks as well. And I just don't want to increase that lack of safety aspect. If we need to increase the multi-use paths, I'm not against that. I mean, I was a big fan of that idea around the Complete Streets Project in South Higuera. I know that did not pass. But for me, I think there are times when newer riders or just not as confident riders, they could use some help in certain parts of our community. So if that makes sense to have additional multi-use paths, yes, please. If it's just general softening on the sidewalks, I'm not excited about that. think I've hit all of the hold on a second okay yeah I think I added to all the things that you were looking for anything I missed okay councilman Shoresman sorry I went first so now I have a couple cleanup things

Just, Councilmember Marks, to your question about the Active Transportation Committee and whether or not they talk about pedestrians at all. I've been to many of their meetings, and yes, they do, unless there is something that is specifically a bike item on their agenda. And even then, usually they talk about pedestrians, too. So it is very much not just a bicycle committee anymore. you had also mentioned that there was eleven thousand dollars or so to spare uh in the list of things that um that staff were proposing and i i would suspect that that eleven thousand dollars could go very quickly in any of those areas and i would just assume leave that flexibility to staff to determine where that extra eleven thousand dollars is needed they might need a few thousand here or a few thousand there to complete any of those things so i wouldn't want to direct them to use it in any one particular area or not. Maybe the equipment for the traffic lights is less expensive than we think and they need it somewhere else. One can always hope. As to riding on sidewalks, I think I was pretty clear that I'm not interested in wholesale, free-for-all, everybody can ride on sidewalks whenever they want. I think that I did hear a couple other people, and maybe I'll look for nods, that maybe this might be a good thing for the Active Transportation Committee to consider looking at, especially for particular populations or in particular locations. I can think of one difficult one where we've spent a fair amount of money to put that crossing in at Woodbridge. And if you cross Woodbridge from Meadow Park or take the hybrid beacon and you go across to Victoria and you ride along the low stress network on Victoria until you get to Orkut, Then it drops you off at an intersection where there is four lanes of traffic. And if you want to go right, it's great. But most people are not wanting to go right because they just came from there. So they're wanting to go left. And there are four lanes of traffic and a little ways down the road closer. Yes. And a median and a little ways down the road. There's a elevated two way bike path right past Ancient Owl. So that's a particularly troublesome spot that I see all the time or that I use all the time that might be a candidate for such a change. And last but not least, San Luis Obispo Vision Zero Plan colon safe streets for all? Question mark. I'm just trying to find a happy medium here. I'm not too wedded to either one.

I'm just not a fan of A through C. A through C.

guess the thing that I have the issue I have with the word traffic is that even if it can apply to all different modes it mostly seems like it's used for cars so it doesn't seem quite as inclusive of a term to me for the purposes of this but I can I'm okay with D I'm just saying that to me that just says road paving it doesn't says it doesn't say to me cycling or walking or Skateboarding or scootering or I could just keep going but I'm I'm okay with a or C But I recognize that you want to spell out slow so Anyway, I'll leave it there Councilman Boswell

Yes, Council Member Shoresman, I like your suggestion. I would prefer them flipped. So safe streets for all, colon, a vision zero plan for San Luis Obispo. But I would support, that's my preference, but I would support the option if that's the feeling of the council.

So if you said safe streets for all, I can handle that more than safe streets for slow.

Yeah, safe streets for all, colon, a vision zero plan for San Luis Obispo.

Councilman remarks yes I'm I I would support that also a vision 0 Cohen safe streets for all and I don't think we need to have the name of our city in the plan. Myself because. It will be all over the plan I mean you know. So to me, I would I would ask staff to look at what is the most appealing to the grant giving agencies that are out there. And do we need to actually have the name of our city in there or not? You know, so I do think in some way specifying a little bit further, more narrowly, what the heck it is we're talking about would be would be helpful. Anyway, it's a tremendous amount of work. You guys have done a great job. That's all I have.

I think the worst thing of all is for us to try to wordsmith this at the dais. So let me just put this back in your hand as far as a title and let us know what you'd like to come back with, if that's okay with you. I think you've heard some different feedback on that, and we can come back to that later. But that's where I'll leave that. Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor, did you still have something or no? Okay, okay. I think you've received everything you need. I see on my script here, there's a motion but that do you need a motion? You do? Okay. Okay, that'll be interesting. I would like to provide that vice mayor.

Okay, can we go back to the recommendation so I can try and get the other questions? I would like to make a motion to approve the minor changes on the Vision Zero plan as presented this evening with the added recommendation that we alter the plan title based on the feedback that you got spelling out the name San Luis Obispo and including a reference to safe streets for all in any order you see fit. I'll leave it there.

If there's a way safe streets cannot be used, I would really like that preference. So I'm just going to say that one more time. Thank you.

Is there a second for the motion? I second.

Council Member Shoresman?

I'll second it.

Sorry. Can we have roll call?

Vice Mayor Francis? Yes. Council Member Schorzenegger? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Council Member Marks? Yes. And just want to clarify that we are still keeping the term Vision Zero in the title. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Mayor Stewart?

Yes, and that passes 5-0 with all of the additional edits, et cetera. Well, thank you. Thank you is kind of a unique study session slash actual business item. So thank you for all of that as well. And lastly, all we have is a liaison reports and communication. Mine is, I want to say quick, kind of. So we had the SLOCOG Coast Rail meeting. What's really the Coast Rail meeting? As my seat on SLOCOG, I'm part of the Coast Rail. Commission and that was in Oakland on Friday so slow cog did pay for that travel and we talked about how are we going to get people from all of California to the World Cup and to Olympics and how do we secure more funding for that there are some funding for operations but it wouldn't last all the way to Olympics so that seems counterproductive we're trying to figure out how that works The federal government is continuing to take more and more funding away from public transportation, specifically in California and specifically for trains. On May 7th, with a few of my colleagues, I attended the Peace Officers Memorial, and we honored the many fallen officers throughout the state. We also had the honoring of the fifth anniversary of the loss of Luca Benedetti here. And that anniversary actually was May 10th, but we discussed it on May 7th at the memorial. Then also on May 6th, we had the RTA transit authority meeting. And I will say that one of the positives that we really wanted to highlight is at this point, they've only spent about 65% of their expenses So that's pretty wild as we're 75% through the year. There's been a lot of work to try to keep costs down as we've, like I said earlier, been losing a lot of transit funding. So trying to figure out what we're going to do on the federal sense. Also, CARB has changed how they are managing the carbon credits and it's actually potentially going to reduce $2 billion, that's worth a B, annually, and that could be affecting our electric vehicles for RTA and for COGS, so that'll be something that we have to keep a close eye on. We did celebrate a couple of employees and employee of the quarter and an employee of 15 years of service and two that were 10 years. The reason I highlight that specifically is one, that's always amazing, but two, Lucas Houston got to share his story about how he started out as entry level and grew his entire livelihood to six children, and his marriage, and supervisor, all within the last 15 years, all on Central Coast funding, or Central Coast salary, and being able to live here on the Central Coast. That was a pretty amazing feat, and we all just said, wow, thank you, and amazing. We talked a lot about the contingency plan about inactive and retired old diesel buses, just in case we need to put them back into service. So that's something we've been talking about, of course, in the city, but we're also talking about that the county for the buses. And lastly, I attended the REACH Economic Development Roundtable, and we looked at different ways that we could help really partner with the CHLO Chamber and go biz from the state they have eight pages worth of incentives for local businesses so something to think about if you have a business in the state of california and in the san luis obispo county there are incentives that could be helpful for you and then of course we continue to share how we're trying to work on how do we help people with health care and housing challenges here in the city in the county and in the region that's it for me vice mayor

Yeah, thank you very much. I also joined you along with most of our colleagues at the Peace Officers Memorial on the 7th and was invited to speak to the Public Health Club at Cal Poly on that same day. It was fantastic. We talked about how to be an activist in a community and how activism can help shape public policy. and then on the 13th I was able to pop into building inclusive public engagement which was put on jointly between Cal Poly debate team and the city of San Luis Obispo and it was about trying to get more young people involved in local government and some really cool ideas emerged from that and hopefully there's going to be actually a little follow-up with the debate team to look at how we might be able to implement some of those ideas that they were proposing On the 15th, I attended the mayor's meeting up in Atascadero, where we received a preview of our arena numbers, which had a lively discussion. Slow Cog was there and talking a little bit about the process and also some interesting challenges presented by some new calculations. And so we're going to see how we can navigate some big numbers. And then on the 15th, I also attended the FPAC celebration of 35 years of student matinees. So many of you here probably have had a child or a relative go and attend these. They bus students from all over the county to go and attend theater productions, dance productions. It's just an incredible experience to get people from every background into the theater and experiencing it for themselves. And then thank you, thank you, thank you to the city for sending Council Member Boswell and I to UCLA Housing and Transportation Conference yesterday. It's Interactions LA at the Lewis Center, and there were just some really interesting presentations specifically on different types of housing, three plexes, four plexes, and some interesting ways to potentially make those easier to build in all sorts of communities. And I will leave that there for now.

Thank you so much. Council Member Boswell.

Thank you. Not too much to report. Last week I spent the whole week in Pittsburgh at the National Adaptation Forum. This is for my other job at Cal Poly. But it is the largest national forum on how we're going to adapt to climate change. And so I've got some good stuff that I've brought back for our staff to share with them as well. Yesterday, a quick trip up and down, or down and back to Los Angeles for the Interactions Conference with Vice Mayor Francis. It was interesting. There was a lot of creative ideas. Many of them were creative ideas to overcome the challenges of building housing with local governments and how they're in the way. So it was some very interesting perspectives to hear, and I think we've got back some good ideas. I look forward to sharing in different forums with staff and council in the future. Let's see. Thanks to the city for doing the bike breakfast. And I'm ready for pancakes tomorrow at the fire department for the fire department's pancake breakfast. That is a it's a scene there. So hopefully see some folks there. And then just this week I have CAPSLO board meeting on Thursday and the LAFCO meeting is on Thursday as well. Although my understanding of the agenda is as usual there's nothing for us on the LAFCO agenda, but I'll be double-checking that.

Thank you. Thank you Councilmember Shorston.

Thank you. Yes, it's been a busy couple of weeks. I too attended the peace officers memorial with the mayor and vice mayor. And then the following Saturday, the mayor and I outfitted a Unit at Welcome Home Village. I know that you helped to outfit another unit in the village. So it was great to see all the people out there setting up the units and they will be able to move in soon. So that's good. Good news. Also, we did the ribbon cutting at the community mural. on Newport Avenue between Newport and CL Smith, and it was lovely. The artist was there, and Amanda did a great job talking about how the mural came to be, and there was donuts, so it was lots of fun. The kids enjoyed the donuts very much. Last week, Last week I had an IWMA meeting on Wednesday. It was a packed agenda. We went almost over time, looked at the budget for, got our first look at the budget for the next year and the board talked about potentially receiving a grant to install a EV charger in front of their new building. Unfortunately that did not pass. the board, but I was appreciative of staff making the effort to go to APCD and try to get the funding to do that. I also had a Cal Poly Campus Planning Committee meeting last Friday, and there was lots and lots of information of the many, many projects that they have had going on campus, lots of infrastructure being built on campus. over the last year or so and some still in process. The Vista Meadows units were a big topic of conversation and that those will be opened up. The first ones will be open sooner than you would think and they will be offered to Cal Poly community members. I don't remember if it's faculty and staff or just faculty, but 30% below market. So that will be good for their recruitment efforts as they say that they will I don't know if this is right now or in the next couple of years, but looking to hire 60 to 80 new hires a year over the next several years. They also talked about their first building. of the new dorms being built and that it will be ready for students to move in in the fall and starting to put in the foundational work for Building B. Actually, it says 513 in my notes. So a couple of days ago, they started putting in the first work on that project. And... There was discussion, nothing specific, but in the discussion about the new dorms, there was discussion about the need of campus groups, fraternities and sororities to have spaces on campus, either both potentially to live or to have their events and gatherings. So that conversation continues every chance I get. So I'll leave it there for now.

Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Okay. Thank you. Well, tomorrow morning we have the Air Pollution Control District meeting, and it's also that time of year budget, talking about budget. It looks great. They've spent about 65% of their budgeted amounts and were 75% through the year, plus there's been extra revenue that they did not anticipate. So that's looking good. The air quality has been, how do I say, affected by the winds, by all the winds going on. And so what that means is that especially what's happening in terms of the dunes and the houses around there and the mesa, the scores are not looking that great right now. But when the winds die down, it should go back. We are making progress. with increasing the vegetation in the dunes is very important. so on the sixth i attended the rack meeting the county water resources advisory committee and it was all about d cell so the county is doing a comprehensive analysis of different alternatives for diesel and the city is involved in that i did talk with staff about The issue that appears in the report that was given during the meeting of wheeling water through the city, in other words, using the city system to wheel desalinated water to other parts of the of the county and i was going wait a minute we don't do that at least we haven't uh historically with a few exceptions but um anyway so i was assured that that's just something that's appearing on reports it hasn't it's not actual yet however the city staff is involved in those conversations on the 8th i attended the uh a mental health forum that Don Addis organized on the topic of anosognesia, A-N-O-S-O-G-N-O-S-I-A, which is a mental illness where people do not believe there's anything wrong with them. Did I pronounce it right? I probably didn't. It's, it's ano anosognosia, something like that. And, and it's a real problem. And it's just actually been categorized as a as a mental illness. So the people who are afflicted by that are absolutely positive that they're not mentally ill, but they're acting that way. So anyway, that was a great um a great discussion uh on the ninth was the city farm slow sheep shearing cindy shindig attended by somewhere between 800 and a thousand people it was free lots of babies uh including seven new sheep and a little lamb so that was good um on the 11th i did meet with um Ermina Karim and Lou Anne about SLOMA and the progress and the renovations. And it sounds to me like they're going to want more money, but I was vague and evasive about that. On the 16th, I attended the graduation ceremony for the San Luis Obispo College of Law. They had nine graduates. And three of them have already passed the bar. So that was very emotional and great. And on the 17th, I attended the Jewish American Heritage Festival. And I want to say it's really amazing that we didn't have any proclamations for this meeting because May is the Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. It's the Mental Health Awareness Month. It's the Building Safety Month. It's the National Water Safety Month. It's the Motorcycle Safety Month. It's Bike Month. And it's also American Jewish Heritage Month. So there is a many proclamation. May is a very popular month. So that's all I have.

Thank you. Thank you. I have a very important question because I did not get to meet Ram Lam Ding Dong, but I did get to hold a cute one week old little lamb. And did they decide the name?

I haven't heard yet. However, the I voted for Millie fundraiser and for a dollar, you got a vote. so the um uh the three names there was daisy uh compost which i don't like that name for lamb and um and then uh the other one was something millie millie yeah i'll let you know okay thank you i was very appreciative

We met another big sheep named Taylor, I think, but it wasn't ram-lam-a-ding-dong. So anyway, well, thank you so much. I forgot I went to that. That was super fun. And also, I encourage them to get totes in the future, reusable totes, because I had to take all my produce home in a t-shirt instead. But now I have a sheep t-shirt, so there you go. Well, thank you so much for all your reports. It was a great meeting. Thank you so much to staff for all the awesome work. And we will see you all on June 2.

Good evening.

You're right. We will be here. We will be back for a special meeting on May 26, next Tuesday. Thank you for that reminder.