Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone. I call this regular meeting of the Los Gatos Town Council to order on February 17th, 2025. Um, town clerk, can we have a role? Council member Renie here. Council member Hudis here. Council member Badami here. Vice Mayor Risto here. Mayor Moore

here. Thank you. Um to kick us off this evening, Council Member Mary Badami will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you very much. Um this evening we have two uh brief presentations um for our business of the month and our resident of the month. Um so I will come down and uh recognize our folks who are here. All right. First we have Margaret Smith of Domis. OKAY. Margaret is very well known in the community as is Domis. Um and so I I first want to say congratulations to uh Margaret and the entire Domus team on being named Los Gatos's business of the month. Um, I really believe this recognition reflects the care, creativity, and heart that you and your store bring to the community every day. Uh, Domus is a true downtown destination, and we're so fortunate to have Domus back. Um, you offer thousands of unique kitchen and home decor treasures. Um, and beyond that, your commitment to Los Gatos shines through in your generosity to local nonprofits. And uh uh one of the things that I think is really important about Domis is that it's a brickandmortar presence in the downtown um that I think really anchors our community. So we're we're very very

grateful to you. And so I have this um recognition for you. And if you'd like to say a few words, uh please uh thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, town council. And actually, thank you, Dol residents, um um customers. Uh, I can't tell you how grateful we are. I have a wonderful staff and I have wonderful customers. Every day people compliment us on the store and I always tell them that we can't be here if they're not here. So, we count on the customers uh to keep our business alive and thriving. And we do we are generous in our community. Uh we have over a 100 nonprofits that we support year in year out and we're happy to do so. So we are a true community store. So thank you Mr. Mayor.

Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. Um and as a reminder, Domus is a very fun place to shop as as Margaret always says. Um okay, for our resident of the month, we have Wendy Riggs. Big congratulations to Wendy Riggs on being named our resident of the month. Um, this recognition reflects the meaningful impact that you make every day on our schools and our community beyond through safe routes to schools. Um, by encouraging safe alternative transportation for our students, you help reduce traffic congestion, improve safety, and promote healthy habits that last a lifetime. Uh, which I think is is truly a very meaningful thing. Um, one of the things I I particularly want to recognize is the way that you have adapted to the changing environment um, in our community. You know, from new state laws to a rise in ebike and e- motorcycle use. You continue to to innovate on behalf of our students. And so, we're very lucky and grateful uh to have you serving our community. Thank you very much. Um, if you'd like to say a few words.

Okay. A few. Nothing much. Um, thank you very much, Mayor Moore, and everyone on the town council, if you, assuming you were involved. Um, uh, you said most of what I, you'd explained what I do, and I think it's kind of, uh, sort of almost embarrassing to get an award for doing something I love so much. Uh, it's a great job. I really love working with the town of Loscatoos, the Loscatos Monosino Police Department, the school districts. Uh I get to spend a lot of time with young kids uh doing education for just enough time to enjoy it and not so long to be sick of it. Uh so it's uh very rewarding for me. I raise my kids in this town and um I I love the community and I love being able to give back to the community. So thank you.

Thank you. Do you want to take a quick picture? I forgot. Thank you very much. All right.

All right. We will now move to our consent items. Um for uh a reminder um the consent calendar is for items that are considered routine um and will be approved in one action. Uh residents are encouraged and welcome to speak um on the consent calendar um uh before we move to public comment. Um are there any council members wanting to pull an item from consent? Okay, seeing none, um we have um two oh maybe three two um speakers uh thus far. Um, so Karen Yamamoto, I have your card in Karen will be followed by Captain Seuss. Hi, good evening everyone. I'm Karen Yamamoto. I live on Benedict Lane. Um, I agree with a lot that has been said by um, other people about the minutes. I'm kind of concerned about the accuracy of them and how they're p how some people have a difficulty time getting their thoughts across. And sometimes it's overwhelming to come up to you guys and speak on it. And it's difficult sometimes to get your full thoughts and your concerns out to you guys. So, and when we do, if there is a if you need clarification upon what our concerns are, I wish that you would include them in

the minutes for a clarification to make sure that everybody's voice is heard and it's known that you guys are actually keeping the minutes accurate. I know sometimes an individual will get up here and it'll be difficult for them to speak and they might be all over the place but what they say is important and there have been some brilliant ideas but they haven't come off quite as the person h was wishing to. So, I want to make sure that the minutes are accurate, that the video is accurately representing everybody, and that you're not deleting anything out of there. Thank you.

Thank you. Hold on for just one second. Um, clerk, are the Oh, is the timer working now?

Can I ask a quick question though before because I I I did four four things. Do I get three minutes for each one or do is it all three? Thank you for the clarifying question. Uh, you get uh one three minute uh uh response or or uh public comment during consent unless an item gets pulled by a council member and then you can speak on that item. But you have three minutes for the consent calendar. Okay, that's what I Okay.

Oh, hold on. Thank you. Okay, go ahead.

Okay, it's just already started. But number two, um like to pull and correct for transparency reasons. Uh this was again it was a a quick meetings on 210. I didn't hear about it. There's uh the the um let's see this was regarding north 40 uh phase two I'm sorry motion uh council member Hudis continue to do this he tried to pull this and it's in there and and you guys he got outvoted three to two um and there was 19 people who spoke 13 people um had concerns of ICE I had concerns of ICE but it's not I'm it doesn't say I it was just various concerns. It wasn't representing me as a as a person. Uh and I'm not a public speaker and somebody just testified to that. Number three, uh on February 10th, um I again you what happened to the 10-day rule? I didn't it was right after the Super Bowl. I didn't I missed that meeting. Four people were here. You said you wish there were more people. Um I you know I I wish that you there's other more important things but you have to give us a 10-day rule or you know spe on special special things the um I'll speak maybe more on that on on verbal dra number drainage assessment 147,000 there uh that's it's a fraud you there's no leak there's I sent you in four pictures I only have so much time to take more than three minutes I wish I really wish you pull I talked to to Mary about it because I don't have that the kind of time. Uh number seven, you know, party zone. I already uh that's what one of the things that's down my aisle and and you're not prepared for it. But I'm glad that you're you at least say hey. But I

I was I wanted to know what happens if it goes how you know the party cuz when you throw a party it gets bigger and bigger especially when the World Cup's coming and I'm you know I I already know it's to get bigger and bigger and bigger outside the zone. I just was wondering what what the you know I trying to keep the crowd down but you know people talk and when there's parties what's going to happen if they go outside that zone and it's it's a big zone but you're to get a lot of people because it's it was like a 1994 you guys weren't ready for it. This one you're not ready for. Um, you know, poll, please pull some of these. Correct. Especially number three because you're throwing away 150. You know, that's a lawsuit. When because I drove by, I have videos. I I sent you in pictures and 1, two, three, four. And I talked to the residents and what happened was a sewer line broke and it flooded everything. They fixed the sewer line. There's no drainage problem there. And I lived in the area. Okay. Sorry. Another thing is on the Thank you. Any questions?

Thank you. Um, and I had one more speaker card, but it's also from Karen Yamamoto, and we just Karen, sorry. We just clarified that uh each speaker only gets to speak on the the total consent calendar. Um, I didn't know that. Okay. Um, so you're you are welcome.

I I'm I'm sorry. I can't uh make exceptions for for speakers to to speak on uh multiple consent items. You are more than welcome to speak on verbal or send us uh your comments in writing. Um thank you. Um okay. Um do we have a motion or Oh, please to the town attorney or council member. Thank you. Um mayor, um I just have a quick question for um Nicole Burnham. Um I saw her here earlier. Um, in relation to item number five, if there's a way I could ask a quick question, mayor, if that's appropriate. Yeah, please. We can we can wait. Um,

thank you, Miss Burnham for coming back. Can you repeat the question? Okay. So, there's a concern um or an eyewitness account that on Loma Street that there's frequently a lot of flooding during the rainy season and tonight there was an eyewitness report um by a speaker that there is no flooding on that street. So, is is there a problem there? Is is there a need to spend 147,000 um for a study when there's no problem even tonight or

um the problem changes. So Nicole Burnham, director of parks and public works, the um the issues that happen there happen um when there's a high intensity of rainfall. Today's rainfall luckily wasn't as intense um as it has been in the past. Um, council may recall that in spring of 2023, you had a number of neighbors from that from that area come and ask that this be created. Um, and that we do an analysis of this area. It is former county pocket. There's no curb and gutter. There is one catch basin. Um, the that that yes, there's a challenge there and we've seen it repeatedly. We manage it through maintenance, but that's not a valid long-term solution, unfortunately. Um, so we really need to look at what our other options are. And I can I can go on forever about hydraulics if you'd like, but it's my favorite topic. Um, but but there are there's a reason there's lots of reasons is a very complicated area that needs some some study.

Okay. Thank you. Sure. You? Yes, Vice Mayor. Uh, thank you. you. I wanted to ask a clarifying question of our attorney because there was a comment made about perhaps our video is edited and for council meetings. I'm not aware of anything ever being deleted unless maybe it was obscene or something crazy happened. Do we No, I'm not aware of any instances in which the town has edited the video. It usually captures the conversation exactly as it was. Okay, that was my observation. Thank you. Any other questions on consent? Um, if not, I'll entertain a motion. Yes, Vice Morristo. Thank you. I move to approve items 1 through 10 under consent.

Thank you. Um, all those in favor? I.

Any opposed? None. Passes unanimously. Perfect. Um, we will now move on to verbal communications, which is the time for members of the public to address us on any items that are not listed on the agenda. Um I have a few speaker cards here and if there are any others um please uh fill one out. Um we will start with Joe Ends and then move to Captain Seuss. Joe ends. Uh, I wish I could come up with a better title than this, but I care about that creek a lot. And um, that's what I'm here to talk to again about getting the gate shut there. I talked to the property manager that used to be in charge of that. They sold the u I sent pictures. They sold it to somebody else and he's trying to work with the other new owner that actually owns I guess it's the apartment right there that is in charge of the fence right directly behind St. Luke's and the gates is just ripped off. It's been that way for over a year or more and it allows people to go down there and maybe do things that are unsafe or shouldn't be doing. And um it's always been a u who runs that, you know, is the water company who's responsible for it. I guess we kind of almost like have to look at that now. Um, I'm looking at wanting thinking it should be locked up probably with the town having the keys or we could get it from the property management. It probably needs to be secured. Yeah. And I'm uh that's all I have to say. The homeless are doing real well. They're dry. Uh we got somebody into rehab, alcohol rehab, which is a big deal. And uh they're are doing really good. Not a lot of conflict and stuff like there was before. And that's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh we'll now move to Captain Seuss who will be followed by Burr Nissen. Okay, three minutes. Uh, I just a little disappointed on the on not pulling number five. Uh, you need three bid. should have three bids at $147,000 to get a fair estimate on whatever it is that your things because I talked to the neighbors on that and they just said that the it's it's undersized this the things but the whole area is undersized. Um I like to talk about the Iran the picture and the paper. Um I was there I was protesting. I heard the thing. I I don't think she should be speaking for the whole town. Just I'm not against what she said, but it was wrong. Um I I I believe there's going to be lawsuits. That's the only way you were to clean up this town. Uh another thing was uh there was a letter from um the new new the police department charging, you know, a new law coming out. A lot of people are talking. it sounds, you know, on on next door and stuff like that. They're saying, "Hey, this is just another scam that the, you know, somebody's pulling on us and it's the, you know, you guys." And that should be re relooked at and and clarified. So it's not me that's to talk other people should be able to come up here and say no you know on the you

know what happens if somebody calls because you know alarm goes on on a car or something like that and it cost 90 or $125 because you or $195. I mean, all this stuff. Um, you know, it gets frustrating when when and I'm trying to be calm and I, you know, I can't I I uh can't bring flowers. You Oh, that's you. Nobody can accept flowers. I was uh I did hear the other day when you have these quick meetings and that's another thing. You have these quick meetings. You're not doing the 10day rule. Uh, you know, that's really important because, you know, eventually the like the traffic issue on North 40 that's to come out. That's to go sideways on you. It's to that's a $250 million project that's to go sideways and you you're under you're under uh um bud I mean you're underinsured by $30 million. Everybody knows that. Um, another thing the the garden I heard the garden area. I was against that the whole time. You had DDT that that was the poison and there are some people that were were were you you talk you sort of talked about it but you're putting dumping more and more money on it. And that's one of the things that got me into this way back before I I got you. I I I sued in federal court in Portland because of of issues and that was prophetic dream. If you had if you had that, you'd understand where I'm coming from, but I I'm not the but best public speaker. I'm sorry about that. Um, and there's the three minutes is is nothing. You know, I can't talk in three minutes. Thank you. Sorry. And this, you know, thank you. We will now move to Bern Nissen who will be followed by Karen Yamamoto.

Good evening. My name is Burr Nissen. My wife and I have lived in Lascatus for over 62 years. I'm 92 and a veteran. First, I want to thank you for serving as elected officials. It is people like yourselves that keep municipalities functioning. Now I want to quote a sentence from a recent article by David Brooks that appeared in the Mercury News. Quote, "We are in the middle of four unravelings in this country. One of them is domestic tranquility when immigration and custom enforcement agents bring down their jack boots," unquote, ICE. There are approximately 600 municipalities across the country that limit the staging and operating of ICE in town and city property. My feeling is that the town is condoning ICE actions if it does not make a statement. Now, if the council is uncomfortable with that, we need to know why. There are probably some citizens, it's a tricky situation. There are probably some citizens in this town of Lascatus who may not have the same opinion as I do. and you represent them. Also, in the article by David Brooks, he also mentions Tacitus, a Roman historian who wrote that tyrants bring about the disappearance of good as morally healthy people lie low in order to survive. I say that is how democracies die and that is also how patriotism is born. Please consider these realities that all of us are facing that America is facing

and become one of those 600 municipalities. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Our next next speaker is Karen Yamamoto. I'm getting my exercise today. Um I wish I had gotten to speak before you had agreed to everything. On number eight, it's the um Pacific Water Art. It has entailed two fountains that are in Lascatus. They have been maintained by this company, well built and maintained um since 2000. We have spent over $50,000 in 2024. We spent 77 77,000 on a UV dysfunction system. And now it looks like we're spending more money on a fountain. I'm sorry. I last time I checked, we're looking at a deficit and we're gonna spend possibly another $100,000 on a fountain. I'm sorry, that's just a waste of money right now. I would hope that the town council would be a little frugal under the circumstances of what we are facing in our deficit in the future. You cannot just allocate funds on wasted projects. You're going to have to tighten the belts. You may not be elected officials, but you certainly will live here. It is important that we do not waste

money on things that do not need to be fixed right now. Our infrastructure, sure, that's understandable. We need to fix some of the sewers. We need to fix some of the things. When these tall buildings come in, they're going to make a mess of our streets. But we need to be a little bit more frugal with the money because it is going to cost us a whole lot more in the future.

Thank you. Um I have no other speaker cards in the room. Um and I see no hands raised on Zoom. I'll give it one second and I will close rule communications. Thank you all for your comments. Um, we will now move to our public hearing this evening, uh, which is item 11 to consider a recommendation by the planning commission to approve a request to modify a plan development to allow for two lot line adjustments between three properties in a zone change.

Great. Thank you, Mayor, and good evening. Before you tonight is consideration of two lot line adjustments, an amendment to the Green Ridge Terrace Plan development ordinance, and a zone change. The three subject properties are located south of Blossom Hill Road. Two are within the LERAS subdivision created through the PD ordinance and one just outside the subdivision. All three properties are currently undeveloped. The applicant proposes two lot line adjustments between the three properties because the property configurations within the are within the PD area would change. A modification of the applicable PD ordinance is required. Additionally, a portion of one property within the PD would be transferred to the property outside of the PD necessitating a zone change from HR2 and a half plan development to HR1. All proposed lots would meet the zoning requirements for HR properties and all other aspects of the PD would remain unchanged. On January 14th, the planning commission considered the request and forwarded a recommendation of approval to the council uh by unanimous vote. Staff recommends that the council accept the recommendation of the planning commission and take the steps outlined in your staff report to approve the lot line adjustments and introduce an ordinance repealing and replacement replacing PD ordinance 2281 and a second ordinance affecting the zone change. This concludes my presentation and staff's available to answer any questions.

Thank you. Questions? Yes, Council Member Hudis. Hi, thank you um for the report. I may have missed it, but are all three uh subject properties owned uh by the same party? They are not. They're owned by different parties. And so the the application is um it's the town that's making the application. Is that correct? No, the application has been provided by the applicants and born at the cost of the applicants. And are all of the property owners the applicants? There's mult. Yes, there's multiple applicants because they're so intertwined. There's multiple applicants for this project.

And are any of the subject properties not um represented by the applicants? Um no. Okay. Thank you. Other questions? Um seeing none, I will open up uh communication on this item. Um, we have one comment from Mark Ellen Borgan. I apologize if I

Hi, good evening. Uh, I'm Mark Ellenburg. I'm representing uh Lata and Green Ridge Terrace. We've got um uh Hannah Bernetti. Um Amanda Musi Verdell here as well. And I'm going to let her explain exactly what we've done with the lot lines and why if we could. Go ahead.

Good evening. My name is Amanda Mousie Berdell with Hanner Bernetti. Um we're proposing a lot line normally not going in front of you but because of the circumstances as Sean explained um you get to decide. Um currently Oh Sean do you have that exhibit up? I don't see it. So okay thanks. Um I just added some color to the lot line adjustment so it's kind of a little bit more easily explained. So, um, between lot one and lot two, um, there the red line is the current property line, which you could see it kind of goes over a valley and through the proposed trail in two spots. And so what we were proposing to do between lot one and lot two is um make that line a diagonal to more closely align with the trail and for future potential homes um to have their yard behind the house and not right up against the property line to give a little bit more privacy and aligned with the trail so the trail is not going you know back and forth through your property. Um, and then between lot one and lot three, which is that uh periwinkle color, is what we're transferring from lot one to lot three in order to um make that lot more compliant when they're building it out to give it a little bit more space and it was area that we weren't using anyway. All easements will remain. The the trail easement will remain, the scenic easements will remain. Um, but we're just asking that the lot lines get adjusted to develop the properties in a more desirable fashion and available for any questions.

Yes, Council Member Hus. Uh, thank you. Um, do you represent all of the property owners of the three subject properties? Yes, and they're sitting here. Right. Okay. Thank you. Other questions? I had a quick question which do you do you plan to if this were to move forward um uh pretty quickly bring forward applications or what is your timeline uh looking like? Uh well we would have to perfect the lot line adjustments so that will take about two to three more months and then it's whatever the market allows. I know um rich one of the property owners is ready to get going um but it's it may be a couple more years.

Okay. And then do you represent more of the properties that are undeveloped on Shady Lane than these three? Not at this moment. Uh I mean we are doing other work on Shady Lane, but this is Green Ridge Terrace. Okay. All right. Thank you. Or in the Shady Lane area. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes, Vice Mayor Stow. Uh thank you. Um, I it was helpful to see the lot line with the contour lines because as I'm looking at it, it looks like the lots were just sort of chunk chunk chunk without regard to the topography. So, um, I know the numbers are in here, but

is any property materially changing size? Um only lot one is um or sorry the smallest lot um is increasing by about a third of an acre but the other two lots are uh even swapped between the two. Okay. Yeah, I saw it was a pretty minimal amount added to is lot three maybe lot one. Um is there a reason that that's being moved over? Does that lot need a minimum square footage or

it already meets it? It just um so if they were to develop it now, they would be asking for exceptions and so by us giving it to them, they they're don't have to come back in front of you when they build their house because they won't be asking for exceptions really. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, great. Um thank you. Appreciate it.

Um I have no other cards um and no hands raised on Zoom. Um so you um as the applicant you have three more minutes if you choose. Um great thank you. Okay then I will close the public hearing um and we will move uh to council member uh discussion and motions. Yes. Council member Badami.

I'll try a motion. Um this was vetted and passed unanimously by the planning commission. I'm in agreement with their deliberations. All property owners are in agreement. So, I do not see a reason um to uh deny the recommendation. My question for staff is in making this motion, do I need to read into the record eight paragraphs? Um if uh if you like uh the motion could be to adopt the staff recommendation including all eight items in that recommendation. Okay. So, I move to adopt uh staff's recommendation which includes um the eight items uh referenced by staff.

Yes, council member Hus. Second. Great. Um and just for the public's awareness, uh we are changing our order of operations on making uh motions and discussion. Um so we are to move things along a little bit more efficiently. We are taking motions first and then we'll have council uh discussion. Okay. Um, other thoughts on this item? Yes, Vice Morristo.

Um, I think Vice, uh, Council Member Badami phrased it perfectly and I did watch the planning commission meeting as well. This is really not controversial. It makes a lot of good sense and I think when there's an opportunity to um have lot lines align with the contour and also make a very small lot a little bit bigger so that there's not exceptions required. It makes sense. So, I'm supportive of this motion. Great. Thank you. Yes, Council Member Hudis. I had a question for staff. Um, has there been any public comment on this? Uh, received either the planning commission or written comment.

Thank you for that question. We've not received any public comment written or at public hearings. Okay. Thank you. Um, and I think we should do disclosures because this is a public hearing. Um, does anyone have any disclosures they they'd like to share with the council? Yes, Council Member Udus, I visited the site. Great, Vice Mayor Risto. Um, I visited the area. I can't say that I specifically knew the exact site, but I've been in the area. Yes, agreed. I have the same same disclosure. Um, okay, great. Uh, seeing no other comments on this item, I will call the question. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? None. Passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, we will now move to other business. Um, we have three items this evening. The first is item 12, um, which is to adopt amendments to council policy 5-02, flag policy, to establish a commemorative flag framework. Um, I will turn to our town manager, Chris Constantine, with staff report.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. There are two items on the agenda that relate to our flag policy. The first one will be the general change to our flag policy that would add a section authorizing commemorative flags. It is agnostic to any commemorative flag. It just offers the option for council to pass a resolution to have a commemorative flag placed on our flag pole. The next item, item 13, will speak specifically to an individual flag that was requested to be brought forth as a resolution. And so you're seeing them bifurcated so that you could approve the policy first and then consider the resolution associated with the commemorative flag. Uh a number of years ago, the council passed policy 5-02. Um as you look at that policy, it's very generic related to the town seal, the town flag, and procedures for raising and lowering the flag on town property. It did not have any provision for a commemorative flag. At the council meeting of December 16th, the council considered whether to modify this flag policy and to address commemorative flags. And at that meeting, the council directed our staff to return with proposed amendments that would allow for the commemorative flag framework and also to come forth uh with a resolution considering uh the progress pride flag. Staff reviewed various policies from other jurisdictions. The majority of cities do allow commemorative flags and do so under the provision that flags are governmental speech that require formal council authorization. Um, and in doing so, we took some of the practices that include that resolution requirement initiated by council, limiting the duration and the number of locations where a commemorative flag may be displayed and to expressly expressly state that those flag poles that we maintain are not public forums, but solely available to the government to

decide what speech to propose. Our amendment in policy 5.02 102 is consistent with these approaches and they're designed to clarify our authority and your discretion. So, specifically to the proposed amendments that follow those best practices, as you would read the latter half of the policy, what we did were some non substantive format, grammatical, and formatting changes to the other provisions of the policy. But the only substantive changes are the new section that's titled under commemorative flags. A commemorative flag would be one that's initiated, the action is initiated by a council member and that action initiation would be through a resolution to the town council during a public meeting. That resolution must expressly determine that the display constitutes governmental speech and relates to a legitimate governmental interest consistent with our town's strategic priorities. The display may only occur at a single designated flag pole within the town hall complex. that the duration of any display is limited in its duration to not exceed 31 consecutive days, which is more or less one month, unless it's February, in which case it could be potentially more. And that each commemorative display requires a separate action from the council. Um, I can go into further details, but I think that's sufficient enough for the council to consider and have discussion on the generic revision to the policy.

Thank you. questions for the town manager. Yes, council member Hudis. Um, under the proposed policy, um, would a particular flag uh, have to be renewed as a separate council agenda item? Yes. Every instance for whatever duration that initial instance would be requested would have to come back to council as another resolution. And so the the instance is it 30 days um or 31 days is it one time of 31 days or is it the same uh 31 days every year

that any resolution you would pass would be limited to no longer than 31 days. Okay. And it would be for one year only a particular year. It would be presumed that you would be displaying a flag for either a month or a week or two weeks. not that you not to be coming back multiple times during the course of the year to display a flag that adds up to 31 days. Okay. Thank you. Yes, Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. I appreciate um some of the information about whether what other municipalities have done. I know that some have resolutions where it states, for example, a specific flag flies for a specific month every year. There's others where it flies only for that year and then it ends up on consent each year when that month comes up again. So, would our resolution allow us to would we be repeating a resolution every year if we had the same specific flag that we wanted in a specific month? For example, the pride flag. If we decided we wanted it in June, would that come before the council every single year to determine if it could be flown in June of that year? It would need to come to council every year.

Okay. I know for example I believe in Los Altos Hills it just goes on consent every year. Um that is a choice the council can make to change the policy if they desire to do something in perpetuity on a resolution which in effect would require future councils to continue that practice um and to take an affirmative action to stop that practice as opposed to reaffirming every year that they continue to desire that speech going forward.

Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. Um along the same lines, can you talk through what the actual process would be? So if if a council member wants to bring forward the the pride flag, let's say for 2027, what would that would that appear under council matters? How what would be the process for that? So the the council would have to agendaize any agenda item in accordance with your agenda setting policy, which could be done by an action of the mayor for that item to be heard under council matters or two individual council members can make that request to agendaize that matter at a future meeting or three council members can make an agenda request that's at the affirmative action that they desire to take.

Okay. Um thank you. And so we can get into this a little bit more, but um it it looks like there's a variet different cities do this in a variety of different ways, right? Some correct some choose to do it in perpetuity. Some bring back resolutions every year.

It it does vary. You also have one city, as you will hear on the next agenda item, that uses lights for this the specific flag that's before them. We did not research necessarily though every instance of other flags that are taken as a separate action by those governmental agencies. We generally looked and searched for their general flag policy with specific reference to the pride flag and the responses that we receive are summarized in the next agenda item. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments on the policy before us? Okay. Um I only have I'll move to uh verbal communications. I only have one comment card right now on this item which is from Captain Seuss. Captain Seuss, Department of Peace. I'm coming from uh the Holy Ghost, the representing the Holy Ghost because I'm a prophetic dreamer and uh I know that um there's going to be a lot of flags and I want my first flag, the pirate flag, to be the first one to be flown. So, I'm going to ask uh eventually I'm going to ask Mary because she's the only one that voted against the four of you and I'll pass out some straws because you guys are like the in the Wizard of Oz. You you four are that way. So, I just putting that out there. Thank you.

Thank you. Um I have no other cards in the room for item 12. Um and I have no hands raised on Zoom for item 12. Um seeing no other comments, I will close public comment on this item um and go to my fellow council members to uh for discussion or a motion.

Yes, Vice Mayor Stow. Well, now that we're following Rosenberg's rules of order, I'll make a motion and then we can discuss. So, I move to adopt the amendments to the council policy. Um, oh my god, sorry, I can't tell the difference between an S and a five. Um, 5-02 flag policy to establish a formal framework permitting the display of commemorative flags as an exercise of government speech when initiated by a council member and approved by resolution of the town council.

Thank you. And I guess I'll make a comment. I mean, I think this is a great idea. We have not had any option to have any commemorative flag in the past. And I was living here when the Brazilians were here. I can imagine, you know, I lived right around the corner and Santa Cruz Avenue had a giant Brazilian flag that covered the entire street. We would never get that on a flag pole, but I imagine we would have wanted to do that. We have a sister city of um Lestell. Um I'll get the name wrong. Ireland and when there used to be the the you know literature festival and other events I can see that with the sister city we would have times when we want to fly the flag and we certainly have heard from our community that we would like to have the opportunity to raise the pride flag and given that we do not have the ability to raise any commemorative flag I think it's time to um you know change our amend our policy and make this possible by a majority of the council as each resolution comes up.

Thank you. I'll second the motion um and go to uh council member for discussion.

Yes, council member Hutus.

I mean I think um separating this into two policies makes sense. It gives us the framework um and we can see how that that works. And then it allows us to look specifically at uh the progress pride flag um which um I am in favor of um of of having a way to to to fly that flag. Um, I want to make sure that the framework that we have, uh, survives the test of time, not just allows for one particular flag. And so, um, I wanted to put something out there for discussion. I'm not advocating for this position. Depending on where things go, maybe I may make an amendment. Um, but one of the challenges with uh flying something other than an official state or municipal flag is determining whether that represents the sentiment of the community and the will of the community. And sometimes it's tough to tell and uh it's difficult to make a determination. Um so I'll just throw an example out there. If a uh for instance, if a council member wanted to raise a flag that supported a political candidate or a ballot measure um upon which the residents would eventually vote in the future um or if a future council majority uh did not reflect the cultural identity of the population. um our council is only five people and sometimes we've even had vacancies. So

um one thought, one way to enhance the possibility that only a generally accepted message flag would be raised would be to uh require a supermajority rather than a simple majority. it it wouldn't guarantee anything, but it might raise the possibility uh that with a higher hurdle um it would be a more generally accepted message. Um so I'm not making an amendment. I'm just throwing the thought out there for discussion. Thank you. We'll go to Vice Mayor Risto.

Uh yeah. Um, first of all, I don't think government property can be used for political um, agendas or anything. And I want to check with the town attorney. I mean, I know that staff cannot take positions on and given that this flag is government speech. I don't think it can be political, but can you clarify?

That's correct. The FPPC regulations prohibit the use of town resources for political activities, and that includes ballot measures. Okay. Thank you. And then I'll just say I personally um I understand what you're saying, Council Member Hudes, about you know trying to reflect the community. Um I would be opposed to a supermajority only because that is required in very specific situations like for financial measures to go on a ballot or something. That's a really special high barrier. And I think that we make incredibly consequential decisions for our community without requiring a supermajority. And I don't even put this on the level with that. Although I understand why you would be thinking that. Um, but that would not be something that I think would be a good idea. I I think a simple majority and probably in most cases we'd have a supermajority.

Yeah. Council member Renie. We're calling it government speech. Not going to be too articulate, but I think my my thoughts are that we we need to try to keep the government to the basic services that we're providing. And I worry a a lot when we start getting into areas where we have to pick winners and losers where, you know, I I think council member Huda started to say, you know, do we represent all the cultural identities of of the town? when we start getting into choosing flags that represent one identity, but there's opposing identities, I think that's an area that the town should not be going into, and that's that's my concern. I think Council Member Risto mentioned the idea of flying the LTL flag if, you know, our sister city is in town. I I see some benefit to that because because I'm having a hard time seeing how it can be controversial, but I think we need to be careful about flying flags that are controversial that have different perspective in town and that the government, your your government here in Los Gatos is choosing one perspective over another. And I just think allowing any commemorative flag, you're starting to wade into a difficult area where I think we as a council need to be fair to everybody. I'm going to stop there.

Yeah. Thank you. Um, Council Member Badami, I echo the sentiments of Council Member Renie. Um he used the term winners and losers, but technically we would be choosing um flags that may um give preferential choice over another group, which actually could be an equity issue and has a potential to call divisiveness uh within the community.

Thank you. So, I'll jump in and just say um I think overall this is a thoughtfully drafted policy. Um I I hear what Council Member Hudis is saying. I think there's there's legitimate questions there. I to me the my understanding of government speech sort of limits that. Um I I also don't again while I appreciate the sentiment, I don't think that a supermajority is appropriate here. Um I I I think it's important to to reiterate, we talked about this a bit last time, but this doesn't open up our flag polls to unlimited expression. Um, it's about exercising the council's uh uh discretion and and government speech. Um, and and expressing values that we claim to uphold like, you know, belonging, equal protection, things to that effect. Um, and and importantly, cities across the county, um, uh, many of them have adopted clear, legally sound policies that allow them to to fly flags. Uh the other thing I'll say is that I I don't foresee a situation um where a slew of council members are are or a council member is bringing a slew of of flags forward. I I just don't um I I haven't heard that desire. Um speaking for myself, I I have um uh one flag that I'm interested in in displaying and it is the next item on the agenda. Um, and so while I recognize that there are concerns about the way this could be operationalized, I I think I think this is a good start, if we end up having issues. Um, I'd be willing to reopen this, you know, next year and and have that discussion. Um, you know, my only thought on this item is I I would, you know, with something like um I'd like to see the

potential to um memorialize a flag being flown so you don't have to bring it back every year, but if you know a next year's mayor could choose to put that resolution on consent um and just sort of do it that way. So I I I think this is a good start. Um and and I think we should you know adopt this policy so we can uh uh you know hear the next item and then you know in the future potentially revisit this. But I think this is a good start. I think it's it's very simple and basic and lays a framework that I think is um can be universally uh understood and supported. Okay. Oh yeah. Vice Mayor Risto,

thank you. And I don't think this is that unusual. A lot of other municipalities have commemorative flags. So, you know, I think, you know, to be to be clear, it will fly below the other flags. This isn't having equal weight with the United States or California or Loscatoos. It flies beneath one of them. It is something that will be temporary each year or maybe only once. We never know. And it's just this policy is just to make it possible. And anytime we have a discussion where a council member wants to bring a flag over or bring it up for um consideration, it will have a p full public hearing and people can weigh in and we will hear from our public. And so I think the council will be able to make a an informed decision with each opportunity for a commemorative flag. But without passing this resolution, we h don't have that opportunity and we would be in a very tiny minority of municipalities that don't even bother to do this. So I see a lot of reasons why this makes a lot of sense. I also want to thank staff for bifurcating this and giving us the opportunity to have a general policy and then we can move towards specifics as it goes along. So thank you.

Okay. Um, I'm not seeing any other questions. We have a motion on the floor, which is to adopt amendments to council policy 5-2, flag policy to adopt uh to establish a commemorative flag policy framework. Um, all those in favor? I I any all those opposed? Uh, opposed. I would make the comment that I do support neutrality uh with support to residents having individual freedom to fly flags on their own property, but I cannot support the motion. Okay. And any abstensions?

I'll abstain. Okay. Um passes 3 to one to one. Um we will now move on to item 13 which is a resolution for the progress pride flag um for the for the pride flag to be displayed under our new flag policy during the month of June 2026. I will um uh look to staff for a uh presentation.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. I think we spoke to some of the issues and I will not repeat it from the last policy discussion. I will go right to uh some of the survey results we received from Santa Clara County at the request of the council. Uh we received policies from 10 Santa Clara County jurisdictions. Um of those jurisdictions, five jurisdictions have formalized deprived flag displays through a council resolution or an annual commemorative flag calendar. This includes Militus, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, San Jose, and Sunnyville. Three jurisdictions allow commemorative or ceremonial flags by council resolution under a governmental speech framework but do not establish automatic or standing pride flag displays and their base policies. Those cities include Gilroy, Los Altos, and Los Altos Hills. Any in those cities, any pride flag display would require a separate council approval. One jurisdiction, Santa Clara, limits flag displays to governmental and narrowly defined ceremonial flags that are approved by resolution and does not establish an automatic pride flag display in the base policy, albeit they can still approve that separately if they desire to. And then one jurisdiction, Campbell, um does not provide for a commemorative flag display on their flag poles, but reci recognizes Pride Month through its water tower lighting policy rather than raising the pride flag. And so there's a number of jurisdictions. Uh the majority of them tend to have general policies that allow for commemorative flags and then varying ways in which the pride flag and which pride flag would be flown. The policies reviewed are consistently reaffirm the policy that we put into place in the last agenda item that the flag polls that are the governments are not a public forum and that any display of a commemorative flag constitutes a public interest in governmental speech. Um in a separate item in February 17th, uh this agenda will amend we've already amended the flag policy and so the action that's before you today is to

approve the attached resolution which would authorize the flying of the progress pride flag for the month of June 2026. And with that, I will turn it back to you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you very much. Are there any clarifying questions of staff at this time? Okay, seeing none, we will turn to public comment. Um, we have a number of public commenters um this evening. Um, we will start with Elijah. Uh, I'm sorry Elijah for butchering your last name, Asha Guen. Um, and then we will move to Terry Hernandez. Sorry, I'm gonna have to find this. Hi, I'm Eli. I'm an LGHS junior and I'm speaking today in support of the proposal to raise the rainbow flag in Pride Month. At the council meeting in December where folks discussed a similar proposal, I noticed a lot of uh very extreme statements made by several commenters. I think that there's a fear among many that council actions will somehow encourage or put pressure on adolescence to change their sexuality or gender or that raising the pride flag would somehow endorse a certain political or religious ideology. I'd like to remind council that this is just a flag. Its effect is not to encourage any particular ideology. No one is going to become gay because of a flag. Rather, its effect is to remind the LGBTQ community that the town strives to be a safe space despite historical actions to the contrary. This isn't just a nice thing to do. It's actually another way to uh address the mental health crisis facing our town. The primary cause of this epidemic is a feeling of isolation. And there's nothing more isolating than bullying, which often targets LGBTQ communities. Some of the results are that LGBTQ teens are six times more likely uh to experience depression than non-LGBTQ teens and that 48% of transgender adults considered suicide in the last year. These aren't just numbers. They're

people in our community and many of them may feel that their town has deserted them. Regardless of political ideology, religious affiliation, or anything really, I think we can all agree that no one in our town should be made to feel that their only option left is to take their own lives. The decision to raise a pride flag is just a small acknowledgement of that crisis and a rededication of ourselves to creating a harmonious community. Thanks.

Thank you. And we'll move to Terry Hernandez who will be followed by Jan Schwarz. Uh thank you mayor and uh city council members for this opportunity to speak. Uh my name is Terry Hernandez and um I am a resident of Santa Clara County. I'm also the president of Pride Social South County. We are a nonprofit that provides uh support to our LGBT community in the county. One of the things that I wanted to share is that this is not a political statement to raise a pride flag. It's actually showing inclusivity of your uh residents and whether it's here, whether it's in another city by h raising the pride flag in the month of June, you're showing that they're also part of the community. We also have youth that have higher rates um as uh or the speaker before me shared um there are higher rates of suicide and especially in the time that we're living right now we have uh our LGBT community um are being killed and uh we also want to hear from wherever we live our community that we are also cared about. So this is one small way of doing that. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. Uh we now have Jan Schwarz who will be followed by Gus who Thank you. I'm Jan Schwarz and I've lived in Lascato since 1974 and um I have a beautiful little granddaughter. Used to be a granddaughter. They are now an ex. They have changed their passport. They've changed their driver's license. They are in college. And this is an acceptance by the government that they are non non-binary. It's a little hard for me to accept, but that is where they are in their happy place. So, we talked before about not having a flag, not providing perspectives. This is not Republican versus Democrat. This is an acceptance of what is. I do believe that these people are happier this way that they feel this way and we need to accept what science has accepted. Um on the other hand I'm also on the board of new m new museum Loscatos. I'm not speaking for the museum but it is part of my value is to bring to this community culture acceptance. DEI is an ugly word. We're not allowed to say that anymore, but I do believe that it is a core value of ours to have exclus inclusivity, not exclusivity, and to bring people into our community. Thank you. Thank you. Uh Gus who followed by Suanne Laurig.

Hi guys. Uh, I sent you in and I wanted to in a backdrop of uh the Friday the 13th uh the monument in that uh Trump tried to take down the in the gay flag uh monument. I don't know if but I wanted that to be up there, you know, because what Trump's doing is is totally wrong. Um, you know, my take on this that you know, I already know that World Cup's coming. There's going to be all kinds of flags here. Uh it's it's one of those things. But I did send you in uh there was major concerns. Both sides have uh people dying on it. And what you're doing you there's no this this wasn't public. This was never public. There's got three days you is not in a newspaper. There's not I mean there's uh let's see there was 43 people that spoke on it last time. Um, and the the the major the one person that that drives around that sued the mayor and the vice mayor on this issue, she she wasn't she's not even listed, you know, for for comments. I mean, she she I you know, I would go in because you you you dismissed her in the minutes. She's you know, she's you you're not to do this fair. you have one person that speaks on it and and Rob Moore who's pushing this and you using kid you're using high school kids um and they're you they're threatening people you know I I sent you into this and you know if oh we're to remember you if if you vote against it I mean that's you don't use kids that way uh you know it's there's you can do it logically you you give two two debates and then send it out and let the the town have a straw vote vote on it. The these people don't represent the town have residents here.

Some of them aren't even residents. The people that spoke on it before there weren't there half of them were out of towners. They called in. They're from San Jose and stuff like that. I mean, if you're living here and and let the the town people have a decision on it, put it in the newspaper. have have a special meeting on it and then send it send have one person represent Mary represent the the neutral side because it is a neutral thing. You don't have to follow the rest of the thing. This is a town. It's not a city. You know that's where people have been saying that this is a town treated as a town. We we all know each other. We all can talk. We don't want to argue over it. And and I grew up in I mean I was born in San Francisco. I went to things I'm neutral on it but but I there and there's truth if you had an argument a normal argument on it a debate on it I'm not the part person that does it I can give things and you know it doesn't res represent peace this flag doesn't represent peace is driving the community apart that's not the symbol of of original the religious views on it thank you

thank you uh we now have Suanne Lurig who will be followed by Siona Singhal.

Hello, Mayor Moore, Vice Mayor Risto, and council. I'm Suanne Lurig and a resident of Liscatos. I'm here to speak in favor of item 13, raising the progress pride flag at town hall during June 2026. And I actually would support it happening every June. If if that could happen that you could change it. Um, thank you for placing this important subject on the agenda tonight. As we know, LGBTQ plus people are still targeted, aricized, and physically and emotionally harmed for their gender identity or sexuality. Additionally, we know that LGBTQ plus teens without support have higher suicide rates than their cis peers. Flying a Progress Pride flag is just such a simple thing to do, yet it may save a life when someone sees that they're supported. A pride flag is much more than a symbol of LGBTQ plus pride. By flying it, it shows that we support people and that we're here for them. Currently, as we heard, a large number of the municipalities in Santa Clara County visibly demonstrate they are welcoming communities by flying the pride flag in June. As we heard in December, San Jose and other communities have done so for years with no problem whatsoever. By joining them, we showed that we too stand for justice and compassion in our human relations and that all are welcome here in Loscatoos. I urge you to join the cities in Santa Clara County and across the Bay Area and flying the pride progress pride flag this June. You may save a life. Thank

you.

Thank you. We'll go to Siona um who will be followed by Lee Cummings. Good evening, council members. My name is Siona Single. I'm a junior at Los Gatos High School speaking in support of item 13, raising the pride flag in June. When I hear people say homophobia is not an issue in Los Gatos, I'm taken aback. How can anyone truly believe that when the LGBTQ community has and continues to face prejudice, ridicule, and hate? When I moved to Loscatos in seventh grade, it was hard for me to find people whom I truly considered my friends. I had conversations with people at lunch and chatted with them during class, but I never felt truly comfortable and truly myself until one day after school, one of my friends dragged me to the campus wellness center for a Club 41 meeting. Club 41 was a place where LGBTQ students could come together and de-stress after a long day. The club offered many different activities, board games, drawings, and even playing the piano. But my favorite by far was creating posters. Seeing the messy, colorful signs we hung throughout school made me feel proud. It was a visible reminder that I was part of something and making an impact. We always signed our posters, believing that if people cared enough to look closely, they would see the names behind the time and effort we had poured into them. But that belief didn't last long. One morning, I walked into school and saw one of our posters torn in half, hanging tattered against the wall. My friends and I had drawn a pride flag and written, "We have pride." It had taken us two afternoons to make, yet someone hated it enough to rip it apart. I felt embarrassed, ashamed, and scared that someone would know I had been part of creating that poster. What had once felt

like a small, joyful act of expression now felt dangerous, as if being seen or even associated with the sign could make me a target. Out of fear, we never signed another poster. Unfortunately, that fear is a reality for far too many adolescence in Loscatoos. When I walk through downtown, I see posters in storefront windows declaring that LG stands united against hate. Yet those words feel hollow when students still feel unsafe expressing who they are. If our town is willing to display those messages publicly, it must it must also take responsibility for living up to them. As the be banners hanging around Main Street Bridge proclaim, "You belong in Los Gatos." And with that claim comes the obligation to ensure that every member of our town feels seen, protected, and supported. Not just in words, but in action. You owe it to the underrepresented LGBTQ youth in Los Gatos. Those who feel afraid to embrace their true selves, who have faced hatred from classmates, and who walk into school every day knowing they are met with judgment instead of acceptance. They deserve more than slogans and surface level support. They deserve a community that protects them, listens to them, and proves through action that they belong. Thank you.

Thank you. Can I ask this speaker a question? Yes, absolutely.

I'm I'm trying to decide who to ask. I don't want to put anybody on the spot. I'll give you a little backstory. So obviously from the the white hair I have I come from a different generation and my generation had to deal with the the understanding themselves if they're gay um in with different resources than we have today. My my brother is gay. My stepdaughter is gay. She's 45. So that's still yet another generation. what I'm trying to understand and and I'm asking the younger people that are speaking, not some of the older ones, that um why is it important that the town flies the flag? How much extra help does that give? And and what I'm mentioned kind of before that I'm worried about and you I'm asking you because you gave the story about your poster being torn in half. One of my concerns is when the town starts flying the flag, it brings out more hate against the community. And I'm trying to balance between do we want to draw more people out that you know on on the wrong side of hate here and versus how much benefit is this really bringing? So my question for you is if you can and and I understand if it's too much, how is this really important to young people?

Well, it's a loaded question, but I'll try my best. Um, like I said, being LGBTQ is often not normalized, especially with younger kids like middle school. It's hard when you aren't seeing examples of it around town. It's hard to accept that. So obviously raising the flag, just seeing it as you're walking to Main Street Burgers or walking to Pizza My Heart, it opens the avenue for acceptance for getting exposure to that community and instead of immediately shutting them down, instead supporting them. And I think despite what hate it may bring out, that's no reason to um not show your support for this community because they deserve it.

And and so I think what I heard is that the flag pole that we're considering happens to be advantageous because it will be seen frequently by the high schoolers. Yeah. Though it may not seem like it will make that big of a difference, I truly think it will because just getting that exposure and seeing that dayto-day, week to week is important. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll now go to Lee Cummings who will be followed by Scarlet Dayard.

Good afternoon everyone. My name is Lee and I'm a junior at Lascatos High School and I'm speaking in support of item 13. When I was in elementary school, Dave's Avenue Goku Cats, my aunt was evicted from her apartment in Sacramento for hanging a pride flag out her window. And for a long time, I couldn't understand why because I grew up in a community, this community, that chose kindness. I had never been afraid to love like my aunt had. My teachers and my neighbors and my camp counselors made sure of that. But now with um the path our country is taking, I don't feel that kindness anymore. We are going backwards into hate and fear. And I can see it in the whispers in my school hallways and in the looks my friends and my neighbors and I receive from people who used to be kind. So today I'm asking um this community to show us that they care and to place value on the diversity that makes this town beautiful. But most of all, I'm asking them and I'm asking you to choose kindness because the only thing stronger than love or is the only thing stronger than hate is love. Thank you.

Thank you. Scarlett Dayard.

Hi, I'm Scarlett Dayard. I'm a freshman at Lascatos High School and I support item 13. I'd like to give a personal story to represent our youth demographic. My question for you is, do you have any reason to stand with hate? When I was 11 years old, my biggest fear was being different. It was around this time I first had started to think I was part of the LGBTQ community. I was horrified of being laughed at when I went to school just because of who I knew I loved. It was also around this time my family took a trip to San Francisco near Halloween. We took a bus tour through the city and I couldn't even count on all of my fingers how many pride flags we saw waving around those streets. I vividly remember feeling a spark of hope and warmth each time I saw one. I knew I wasn't wrong or different to love somebody. I knew other people had these feelings, too. And most importantly, I knew people had pride in it. This is why it is so important, even just for the month of June, to have pride flags here in Lascatos. My community has experienced so much hate in this town, which I can confidently say is not what anybody here wants for our youth. I've been called names I cannot come up here and say because of how disrespectful they are. To those who believe being queer is a choice, please understand that at 11 years old, I would never have chosen to face the bullying I did. I didn't choose who I want to love, but I'm willing to fight to feel lucky. Lucky to be a part of this community and to feel proud rather than shameful. This is why I'm asking you to stand against hate and fight for our youth and our future. By putting up this flag, Loscatoos is not under reppresenting other communities that are widely normalized. Our town has long welcomed other demographics. However, many of our town's community does not show as much respect to LGBTQ folks. By putting this pride flag up, I believe it will simply represent equality rather than saying one demographic is greater than another. Thank you.

Thank you. Um we have Nova J. Um and she is followed by uh Surya Pandion. Good evening council. My name is Nova Gerage and I'm here tonight as a young person in our community speaking in support of item 13 raising the progress pride flag in Los Gatos. I want to begin by acknowledging a concern I've heard that raising a flag may feel like over representing one group or leaving others out. But to me, this isn't about exclusion at all. It's about responding to a very real history of harm in our town. When I was talking with a friend about this proposal, I told him that raising a flag seemed like such a small gesture. It's just a flag. But he told me that it wasn't small to him. He said seeing that the flag seeing the flag would make him feel safer. Even though he's still too scared to tell his f family that he's actually gay, he's afraid to tell some of his closest friends because being queer can still feel isolating in Los Scats. He shared that once he went to see a movie in town that featured queer characters and he heard a man nearby mutter that the queer characters ruined the whole movie. It might seem like an off-hand comment, but these moments sick stick. They send a message about who belongs and who doesn't. And these aren't isolated incidents. In 2021, homophobic slurs were graffitied at Loscata High School. When the rainbow sidewalk was installed, the mayor received back threats and intense backlash. In 2016, a gay resident found his car covered in anti-gay slurs. I've personally seen pride flags put up by local businesses only to be torn days later. These are not abstract national debates. This is our town. So, when we talk about raising the progress pride flag, we're not talking about politics. We're talking about whether LGBTQ plus residents, especially young people, feel safe and valued here. For a community that prides itself on kindness and inclusion, we have to ask ourselves whether we are living up to that promise. This flag will not solve everything, but it does send a clear message that Los Gatos recognizes the harm that has happened

and that we are choosing to stand with those who have been targeted. Silence or neutrality on issues like this can feel like indifference to people who are hurting. As council members, you are not only representing the loss of today, but the loss that we are becoming. Many students will speak tonight. You've heard many speak tonight. We are telling you what kind of town we want to grow up in. One where people are free to be themselves without the fear of love. Of all things like to me of all things that you could hate, hating love is just so unbelievable. We weren't asked by anyone to be here. We're here to act um on our rights as constituents. So I urge you to consider that future very carefully. Thank you.

Thank you. Um we have Surya uh and then Guy Shyah. Um, good evening, esteemed chair. Uh, I'm Suruponian. I'm a sophomore and a local res. Can you put the mic a little bit closer to your mouth? Thank you so much.

All right. I'm Ser Panian. I'm a sophomore here locally. Um, I'm here to talk about item number 13 and I'm strongly in favor of this resolution. And I believe um a common concern that was going around in negation to this resolution is that this will like come was will create more hate in the community of Los Gatos. And I believe this um concept created mentioned by a councilman like of opposing identities completely bewildered me because we are all comprised of individual like elements of our of ourselves and to say that we are opposing each other through our identities is something that we don't want like it's not a rhetoric that we don't want to be continue spreading throughout our community of Los. We are a small local town and we want to com combine ourselves. We want to show that we are all a community and I believe the burden of the hate that this flag will create falls upon the councilman and we shouldn't allow it to fall upon the individualselves. To say that we should only raise our flags in our own homes and to say that the town won't raise the flag is completely again bewildered me because I don't understand why we should allow the individual people to to like stop them stop the hate themselves by holding the flag themselves trying to represent a community that they might not even belong to. And again, this idea of opposing identities shouldn't exist because communities, as a community, we are all comprised of individual selves and we should all love each other and respect each other to create a successful, more collaborative place for people. And our youth is our future. We can all agree on this. And because of this, I believe it's important for high schoolers and middle schoolers to know that they are accepted. The pride flag is not just a symbol of what we represent. It's a symbol of acceptance. to say that we accept we don't accept people or by not raising the flag we are saying that we don't want to take upon the burden that this hate or this community brings to our town and the hate that this brings um should fall upon the burden of the council. Thank you.

Thank you. We will go to Guy who will be followed by Jeff Suzuki. Hello, my name is Guy Shaham and I'm here with the Loscatoos Saratoga Youth Advocacy to speak in support of item 13, raising the pride pride flag. One of the biggest points of contention I often see in topics like the one today is whether explicitly advocating for a specific group implies the exclusion of other groups, as mentioned previously by some counselors. I understand the general concern in the matter, but to be honest, in practice, this concept doesn't hold up to me. Tell me, does having a Black History Month mean that Asian history doesn't matter? Does having churches in our town mean that our Muslim neighbors shouldn't have mosques to pray in? How about women's suffrage? Does standing up for women's rights mean that men's rights don't matter? Of course not. I could go on and on about how including a specific group doesn't mean that members of other sexualities, religions, or ethnicities are not welcome. Because let's be honest, no straight person is going to come to our town, see the pride flag, and think, "Huh, guess I'm not welcome." So why shouldn't we care? Why shouldn't we care about putting up a flag that doesn't do anything but include a historically oppressed and marginalized group? Thank you. Thank you. We'll go to Jeff um who is followed by Karen Yamamoto.

Good evening, council members. First, I'll start with saying that I am not speaking in my capacity as a complete streets and transportation commissioner, but as a private resident and the president of the Los Gatus anti-racism coalition. I would like to start with a story. About two years ago, I volunteered for uh the Rainbow Defense Brigade, which helps ensure that events for held for the LGBTQ plus community are safe and not full of harassment. It was held at the Queer, Trans uh and allied student summit at Watsonville High School. I wore an orange vest and I ate donuts and I felt like a cop for a bit. Um, and there was no significant amount of harassment thankfully. But I had an opportunity to look at the students who are coming in and and and seeing how they they interacted with one another. Um, many of them were of varying gender identities. Many of them were straight, many of them were gay or lesbian. Um, there were some trans people there, uh, some non-binary folks that I heard. Um, and if there's one thing that I felt like characterized the atmosphere of this event, it was that it was filled with abundant joy. And it made me realize something which is that spaces like these are quite scarce and they often have to be carved out proactively.

We can see that there is a real issue of invisibility of repression and that many people feel that they cannot publicly love the people they love or be who they want to be. And if hoisting this progress pride flag plays a small role, that is the least that we can do. Thank you. Thank you. We will go to Karen Yamamoto who is followed by Chelsea Bay. I just want to start off. I'm so proud of these young people. Oh my god. I'm just amazed by them. Um, I actually rewrote what I was going to write with the passing of number 12. Um, there was a one little part that Chris said that in the statement that had to do with federal law, federal regulated flags. And I wanted to clarify that and how that affects the pride flag. I'm for the pride flag. Um, but I do see where issues are coming up with a couple of you. the issue of if it's a if the federal government is banning pride flags like Gus who was trying to explain um it does create a concern for us if we vote to have the pride flag flown and it's against federal regulations.

How then does that affect our community? So with that said, is it is it possible that we can do the flag for not just 31 days, but can we do it for just a weekend? Is that still part of the federal government issue? I I'm I kind of need a clarification on that because it came up later. The other thing that you guys discussed was the controversy over how it supports our community. And I'm going to answer Mr. Rene's question. When we unite as a group, as a town, as citizens, the hate has quieted down. It did it before when we united when thy last wore the shirt and marched down that street, Main Street. And I believe by raising the pride flag again, we can quiet the hate. Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll go to Chelsea who will be followed by Kylie Clerk.

Okay. Good evening, council. My name is Chessel Bay and I'm a senior at Los Ghettos High School and I'm speaking in support of item 13. Um I'm up here because the reason why I love this my school and this town so much is because it reflects one of my core values which is community. Um, additionally, I'm proud to say that I am a member of the LGBTQ plus community. Um, and even though it took me a while, um, like few years to be openly comfortable, um, to say that out loud, I am beyond grateful that I live in a community full of so much love and warmth and I have friends that make me feel safe to express myself. Um, I currently work at a nursing as a nursing assistant in a nursing home with some of the most amazing elderly people, many of which are a part of the LGBTQ plus community. I've heard many stories of elderly residents feeling fearful and um of expressing their identity because it made them feel unsafe for a large portion of their lives, which led to them to only recently publicly express how they truly um who they truly are, which I find both heartwarming and heartbreaking. Imagine living your whole life not being able to tell your best friend who you have a crush on or get your nails done or go dress shopping because society put you in a box based on your biology. No one should have to um hide who they love or who they are for the majority of their life. But that is the sad reality for um nearly all LGBTQ plus seniors in our nation. Los Gatos is a community that is approximately 21% elderly, which is well exceeding the national percentage. These people have spent the majority of their lives hiding such an important part of who they are because they felt unsafe or they feared criticism. They hided they they hid these parts of themselves from even their closest family members, their friends, and they were just never able to openly express who they are, which is, like I said, heartbreaking. I say that we must raise the pride flag in LG for the seniors in our community that only recently felt comfortable or

are still uncomfortable with publicly expressing their identity. Justice and making the community feel safe for everyone shouldn't be revolutionary, but it is. Raising the pride flag in the heart of Loscatoos will publicly show the values of our town for everyone to see, reinforcing the core values that make this town so great. Thank you. Thank you. Um, we'll go to Kylie. And our last uh the last card I have up here is Jim Castleman.

Good evening, council. My name is Kylie. I'm a resident of Loscatos. Every June, pride flags are flown in 11 out of 15 cities in Santa Clara County, according to the Office of LGBTQ Affairs. and they tell those city's residents that they are welcome and they are safe and they're desired to be there even in this time of fear and hatred in our country. And at the same time, right now, Los Scatos's flag pole sits bare without the pride flag. None of these other cities have had some of the problems that we're hearing some of the council members might have as concerns. They found a way to fly specifically this flag and the to participate in the countywide effort. And I think that the excuse that there will suddenly be demand for every flag under the sun just doesn't make sense because you are only being asked to fly this flag. We are here to ask you to fly this flag. It's not singling out one community. It's responding to a need for a message of welcoming and inclusion. And that's why so many other cities are flying the pride flag. I do want to say if you listen to nobody else, please listen to our youth. What message are you sending them? First about civic engagement if they come here time and time again and and then you vote against their will, but also worse, what message are you sending our LGBTQ youth who have higher rates of suicide and of self harm about whether they're welcome in Los Scatos? Their kids and our country is telling them that they're not allowed to be who they are. And I want our town to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. And we can do that tonight. I want to address council member Reniey's question. I think that was a really good one and I just want to say from what I've seen and I think from some of what we've heard, the hate is there. It's already there and the town can either respond to it or not. And I think when the town responds to the hate, it, you know, might get louder in some ways, but there's not silence in response to it. And I think that's really, really powerful. It's unique for the town to

raise our flag rather than for a business or resident because it says that you are safe in Los Scatos, not at this business, not at this home. It's in our entire town. And that is important and powerful. In my opinion, it isn't the council's job to be neutral. It's to guide the town in the right direction to reflect what the folks who elected you believe in. And that's what you're hearing tonight. It's what you've heard from the vast majority of residents that we believe in this and we support it. and I'm asking you to help guide the town in a direction towards inclusivity, compassion, and kindness. Thank you. Thank you. Um, and we will go to Jim Castleman.

Good evening, Mayor Moore and city council. I just want to also speak uh on behalf of supporting this uh resolution 13 in support of flying the pride flag in June. Um I I have also been extremely impressed by the number of uh youth that have come out and the way that they very eloquently have expressed how important this issue is to them and being of a generation uh closer to most of you. Uh I'm I'm very proud of them and I hope that the city council will see how important this issue is to them and support them. Um I have a adult son who is gay and having firsthand experience um it can be very difficult for a gay youth to feel comfortable to feel accepted. Uh and I think that this um is a symbol of of acceptance of the LGBTQ community and I think it's very meaningful and important and I think all of the youth who came here tonight really did a great job of emphasizing that. Thank you. Thank you. Um, that's our last in-person speaker card. We have two hands raised on Zoom. Uh, we will first go to Ali Mo who'll be followed by Ken Jagger.

Hi, thank you very much for uh taking my um comment. Uh, I just wanted to say as I did the last time this issue came up that for me this is a no-brainer. Um, and I believe it it really ought to be for our council. Uh, because um, you're supporting a community that is traditionally marginalized. Um, you've heard all the statistics, uh, the the higher suicide rates, etc., you know, the the um mental health difficulties of LGBTQ youth. So why not support them? Why not support this community? And really when you support a community that is being maligned and bullied as we're seeing all across this country uh not just with LGBTQ folks uh but of course immigrants and uh black folks and other communities and you see the kind of efforts at exclusion going on. I think it's a incumbent upon us all to to stand up and just say no. Uh, you know, we've got to have some some courage. And whether or not, you know, the federal government wants to say you can or you can't, uh, I think we all know what's right. and exercising our right for free speech or government speech or whatever you want to call it and standing up for folks. That's what we need to be doing especially now. Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll now go to Ken Jagger.

Sorry. Um, yes. I uh speak to you uh this evening as a former San Jose city council member who after I was elected in 2000 wondered if the rainbow flag had ever flown at city hall. I learned it had not, nor had any of the other 14 cities in the county. And I knew it was time for the city of San Jose to make history by being the first. Many conversations took place with the mayor, council members, and the city manager. While some had questions, there was universal support. And so on June 26, 2001, along with Mayor Gonzalez, I raised the flag. It was one of my most proudest moments because I knew it sent a message to our residents and employees that we were a welcoming city for everyone, including those who identify as LGBTQ plus. Now, every June since then, San Jose City Hall Plaza is crowded with people and elected officials to celebrate raising the flag. No controversy, no protests, no problem. 10 other cities have raised the rainbow flag at their city halls, and I've attended most of them because I recognize their historic significance. This June will mark 25 years since the rainbow flag was first flown in San Jose. 25 years, a quarter of a century. I urge you to be on the right side of history and join the other cities that recognize the significance, the value, and the importance to the entire community of raising the rainbow flag. Now is the time. Thank you.

Thank you. We have no other hands raised on Zoom and no other inperson speakers. So, we will close public comment and I will look to the council for um questions, comments or a motion. Yes, Vice Mayor Stow.

Thank you. I have a question for staff. Um uh Miss Yamamoto brought up something about the federal government banning the pride flag, which I was unaware of. I know there's some states or at the state level they've banned it and cities have adopted the pride flag as their city flag or other things, but I haven't heard anything about the federal government having any jurisdiction over this. Since the federal government passes thousands of laws, I'm not familiar with all of them, but I have not heard that the pride flag has been banned. I think in reference to my statement, it relates to the regulations of the order of precedence of the flag being on a flag pole that the US flag must take a position of prominence to uh any other flag and and in deference to the US flag code. That was the statement made in my staff report.

Okay. Thank you. Yes, Vice Mayor Stowe. Um,

before I charge into a motion, I just wanted to put some thoughts out there. I know that we're with Rosenberg's rule of order, we're supposed to start with a motion, but indulge me for a couple of minutes. I mean, one of the things I was thinking about is um when we did have the United Against Hate March, we had in our council chambers been experiencing an incredibly high degree of hatred pointed specifically toward our former mayor and a number of other people in the community. And you know, sitting back and trying to be neutral about that would have been absolutely the wrong thing. And there were over 3,000 people that spoke up and our community came together in a unified way. And I know that not only our mayor and her family, but everybody that felt persecuted in that situation felt like the community had their back. And I know that the town council stood with our mayor. When I think about what it means if we fly the flag, I think there's not a question of neutrality at this point because we're having a discussion about it. Voting against it is sending a message. Um, when I think about whether we're talking about one group versus another, this isn't specifically like a political discussion where you've or a war where you've got one side or another. We have an entire stripe of people that fit into the LGBTQ community that are across all political parties in every single nationality and country of every religion. It's a cross-section of our entire society and our planet and it's part of Loscatoos. And you know, when I hear people talk about their fear or hatred being focused toward them, we are

on town council to be leaders. If voting for this gets my name put on somebody's SUV, I can handle that. I'm not a high school student who doesn't feel support. And words don't hurt me. And I'm here to be an ally to help protect people and to elevate the message that we say that we hold as a value in our community of inclusiveness, of support, of welcoming. And I want to make sure that every resident and visitor and employee in our town comes and sees that message of support. Numu flies the pride flag. Midpen flies the pride flag. The terraces of Loscatoos pride fly the pride flag. And when you've got these oneoff islands, it is almost screamingly obvious that Loscatoos should be doing it and us not doing it sends a message as well. So that's where I'm kind of hanging right here. And I don't know if I can answer Council Member Renie's questions, but to me it's a question of saying that you are seen, you are supported, you have allies, and this is of value in this community.

Thank you, Council Member Badami. I may remain neutral on the flag pole per item number 12, but this council, with the exception of Mayor Moore, who had not yet become an elected official, supported the pride community, 365 days a year, continuously, I think for the past five, six years, and not just 31 days out of a year, by painting two pride crosswalks between the high school coming across to town hall. Those crosswalks are symbolic. They're inclusive and they're very welcoming. Okay. Still looking for a motion.

Vice Mayor Risto. All right. Seeing no other comments, I will jump in um wholeheartedly. I move to adopt a resolution authorizing the display of the progress pride flag at town hall during the month of June 2026. Thank you. Is there a second? Council member Hudis.

Yeah, I'll second. Um also, we now are moving into discussion, please. And I I I would just like to say that um you know listening very carefully uh to our residents not only the ones we're here tonight but also ones who uh spoke previously. Um I am very supportive of uh raising the the progress pride flag. I think it will be helpful to our community. Um, and you know, regarding the fear of picking one ideology over another, I really don't think that's the case here at all. because I think as I listened to the voices I came to understand that this is not about um people's ideologies but it's about people's identities and uh that um people don't necessarily uh choose those identities those identities are inherent to them and I think it's very important um that uh we provide support for all in our community. So I will be of course supporting the motion um and but I will be vigilant in the future about not taking flags uh that are for ideologies. I don't think that's the the proper role for um for municipal um government speech. Thank you, Council Member Renie. Um, thank you, Mayor. So, um, as as I said, I was hesitant for us to wade into this government speech

area. Now that we've waited, let me wade wade into th this issue. Um, I I think from the question I asked, and I want to thank the the young person for letting me put her on the spot there. Um, from my question, you got a lot of my my thinking on this of of of course I'm supportive of the pride community. Um, I I think there was an argument other cities have done this, yada yada yada, but what I've observed is our city is a little bit different. There seems to be a lot more hate here. So, I'm a lot I'm sensitive about doing things that don't generate more hate. I I think the other cities haven't have had the I'm going to call it a luxury of not having to worry about nearly as much of the hate. I mean, I I live through that um quite a bit. Um, so I think about as I think as my question said the balance between let's make sure we don't generate more hate while supporting people and I think the the number one important thing is the town should be supporting groups against hate and we did that the last time we saw a lot of it. I just want to make sure we don't generate it again if we can avoid it. But if it is generated, we're going to support those people that that have felt the hate. Um, you know, listening carefully, it does sound like this flag can help support the people that have have been feeling the hate. So, although I don't think this was a no-brainer, as some said, I've I, as I'm I'm thinking through it carefully, um I can I will be able to support this. I'm hoping that we don't generate more more hate from it. Um, but it's

now that now that we've taken the step to have this as a possibility, it's worth taking the opportunity to see if we can make things better without making them worse. Let me just check my notes, make sure I said everything I was thinking about. I I think that I covered it. Thank you. Yes, Vice Mayor Stow.

Thank you. Uh, council member Renie, your comment made me think of another point I wanted to make. And I would say that I don't think raising the flag will generate hate. It may expose the hate that already exists. And I think if we're lifting the rock up and we see the hate, that's another reason why we need to raise this flag. And if people want to express their displeasure, that's their first amendment right. Um, but I don't think the flag itself generates the hatred. the hatred is there and it's just a matter of whether people feel free to express it or not.

Thank you. Um, so I'll jump in with my thoughts. I I I'll just start by saying I I think that a community reveals its character not just uh in what it tolerates but by what it chooses to affirm. And I think that is the the question before us this evening. Um, I want to begin by thanking the many residents from high school students to longtime community leaders who came forward to share their stories both this evening and when we discussed this item in December. Uh, your presence makes clear that this discussion is not abstract. It is about our neighbors, our children, and our friends. Um, I strongly support adopting the re resolution before us this evening to raise the progress pride flag this June. Uh what stood out to me most over the course of the discussion over the past six months or so is the diverse set of residents who have asked us to take this step. High school students have spoken to us rather articulately uh uh uh both this evening and and in the past. Um parents have written to us and longtime residents have shared um deeply moving personal stories. Um I don't think this is a narrow or a fringe request. I think it refle reflects a broad cross-section of our town um uh who believe that this issue matters. This decision matters because symbols matter. Flying the pride flag will not solve every challenge facing our LGBTQ residents. But it does send a clear, unmistakable message. You are seen. You belong here. And our town stands with you. At a time when LGBTQ plus rights are being debated across the country, visible acts of affirmation carry real weight. In 2024, FBI data showed that a 21 that over 21% of all reported hate crimes across our country were based on sexual orientation or gender ideology despite only about 9% of the population identifying as LGBTQ plus. That disparity tells us something important. Uh this community, the LGBTQ plus community, remains disproportionately targeted and marginalized. Closer to home in

neighboring Palo Alto, two transgender teens have died by suicide in the last 10 months. Their deaths are heartbreaking reminders that LGBTQ plus youth often carry pressures that many of their peers do not. We hope and pray that nothing like that ever happens here in Los. And while a flag alone cannot prevent tragedy, visible affirmation from trusted institutions, including from our local government in our ta in our flag polls uh uh in front of town hall is one small but meaningful way to help young people know they are not alone. As I've shared before, Los Gatos has a complicated uh history on this issue. There have been times when members of our community have felt unseen and unwelcome. And though while we cannot change the past, we can choose what message we send moving forward. I believe that raising this flag does not divide lowcats. Instead, it defines who we are and what we stand for. This action tells our entire community that this town believes in all um it believes that all belong and that all are welcome. For those reasons, and I will be supporting this resolution to move forward with a progress pride flag raising in June 2026. Thank you. Seeing no other comments, I will call the question. All those in favor? I

I. All those opposed? Opposed. Motion passes 4 to one. Thank you all. Thank you. Um so because it is just about 9:00, the town council will now take a uh uh brief um 7 to 10 minute break. Um and we will reconvene. Let's do 9:10. Thank you.

All right. Um, I'm going to reconvene this meeting of the Los Gatos Town Council for our riveting uh midyear budget. Um uh so this item is to receive the 2025 2026 mid-year budget report um including endofear projections. Um Christina Alaro, our administrative services director will present the staff report.

Good evening, Mayor, Town Council. Um here with you this evening to present the midyear uh budget report along with the 2627 updated forecast. The purpose of the midyear report is to provide the town council with the status of the adopted fisc year 2526 operating budget after the first six months of the fiscal year uh and to make any adjustments to ensure the continuity of municipal services and operations for the remainder of the fiscal year. This report is one of several periodic updates to the town council on the status of the current year's revenues and expenditures and the projected financial condition of all town funds compared with the adopted operating budget. The update typically focuses on the town's general fund. This is this is because this is the town's largest fund and also where the council has the most discretion. In addition, we will also be discussing changes to the 5-year forecast. can advance the slide. Thank you. I won't read through this slide, but this is uh the recommendations before uh the council's consideration uh this evening. Um with that, we'll jump right into the presentation. We can go to the next slide. Um kind of starting with some major takeaways uh from this midyear financial report. Uh we've seen the town's financial forecast and conditions improve. This is mostly being driven by uh increased sales tax estimates. Sales tax is generally received about six months in a rears. Um so we're making our best estimate uh for the end of the year and we'll talk a little bit more about what's driving some of the sales tax estimates later in the presentation. Um deficits are still present but have been reduced. So with that I also uh want to start off with uh we were uh uh gave this presentation or in a very similar format to the finance commission uh last Monday. Um so I wanted to go over some

of their um questions or comments uh regarding the midyear. First is there was a question regarding as you'll see later in the presentation a recommendation to decrease expenditures in the equipment fund and the question was related to uh because the equipment fund is an internal service fund which means it's a fund that charges out other user departments for their functions. if we uh had missed an offsetting uh reduction in expenses in the general or other funds uh that use vehicles and equipment. Uh at the meeting we were able to answer that it's not a onetoone charge out. We could see that in the adopted budget book that showed about half of the expenses of the vehicle fund being charged out to departments. Upon further research uh we find that we do not need to make an additional expenditure adjustment down for the other funds. Uh this is because of how this internal service fund is set up. We look at uh vehicles and equipment that need to be uh replaced over um a long-term horizon. And then we adjust the budget or the charges to the departments up or down to either increase fund balance knowing we're going to have a significant amount of f uh purchases in the future or we may uh decrease the charges if we need to use some of that fund balance. uh and what it ultimately results in is more of a smoothing pattern on the smoothing pattern on the operating budget. Uh there were also some other uh minor corrections that we made. There was a a typo I believe on the first page of the report um that had a previous expenditure number that had been updated. Uh there were also questions regarding a miscellaneous other category and what items were included in there. Uh and in the miscellaneous other category we have measure G proceeds, pension trust fund contributions and sale of property. Uh lastly, attachment five. Uh and this was actually staff noted this was corrected uh the table on page four of attachment one to remove the double count of debt service from

the revenue categories. Um and this resulted in our u adopted budget uh in that table matching what's currently in our adopted budget. Uh so with that uh we'll move over to a uh summary of general fund revenues and expenses. And so what this table is, it's a summary of the table we were just discussing in the previous slide that we made corrections to. What it does is it shows you that very first column. Um it shows you our fiscal year 25 actuals. So revenues were 61.8 million, expenses at 57 million, which resulted in revenues over expenditures for a positive 5.7 million. The next takes are fix fiscal year uh actuals as of December uh 2024 and you'll see revenues were at 19 million expenditures at 24.9 and at the midyear point of the year last year we were showing a $5.8 million uh deficit. This is actual uh not budget. Uh what we also note is uh the percentage uh collected or spent. So, we are 31% collected on our revenues and 44% collected on our expenses. When we get to the midyear point of this fiscal year, we're are 34% collected in our revenues. So, slightly higher, about three 3% higher than we were collected last year. And our expenses stay at about 44% of the budget as of the midyear. When we're looking at our actuals as of December 31st, 2025, we see our revenues are tracking at 21.8 million, expenses at 26.3 million. Uh, and overall looking at a revenue over expenditures of a -4.5 million. Uh, our fiscal year 26 budget had us revenues at 59.9, expenditures at 60.4 uh for a revenue over expense of uh about a half a million dollars.

The next three columns show um where our our adjusted budget uh legal or amended. There's many terms for it, but it's basically the adopted budget and any adjustments that have been made through December 31st uh 2025. Revenues are at 63.4 expenses at 62.5 and now we have a uh positive revenue over expenditures of about.3 million. The next column shows the recommended mid-year adjustments for the general fund. So revenues being recommended to increase by 3.6 million, expenses uh being recommended to increase by 1.4 million and then revenues over expenditures coming in at 2.3 million. Now the very last column shown here uh what this column does is it takes uh where departments are estimating to end the fiscal year for revenues and expenses and then overlays the midyear budget adjustments on top of them. So, you won't be able to get to this column um from the other columns listed here, but what we did try to do with this column is kind of show our best guesstimate of where we think we're going to end the year. Uh and looking to end the year at a positive 4.3 million. With that, we can go to the next slide. Uh this slide is really just meant to summarize uh where the adjustments uh that we are recommending are located. Uh first you'll see the general fund listed at the top and we have uh expenditures and revenues listed out by departments. Overall in the general fund as I mentioned earlier we're recommending expenditure increases of 1,350,141 offset by revenue increases of 3,58188. And when we look at all the other funds, so all the funds outside of the general fund, we're overall recommending an expenditure decrease of 1 point uh 1,255,561

and revenue decreases of 96,000. So with that uh we'll move into the general fund revenue adjustments. We can go to the next slide. So these slides I tried to put a lot of detail in. There's also a lot of detail in the staff report, but I'll go over kind of some of the major items here and if there's any questions, we can always come back to the slides. Um, so taxes overall we're recommending tore increase by 1.27 million. This is being driven primarily by sales tax and measure G. And this is really from an updated forecast from our new sales tax consultant HDL along with new businesses uh that we anticipate having in our forecast. This is one that we'll watch closely to see if any additional adjustments uh need to be made before the end of the fiscal year. Uh so with that, another major one I did want to touch on here is our transient occupancy tax is trending lower than we uh had expected based on the first six months of collection. So we're asking to make an adjustment to uh toot tax as well. Moving on to um additional uh uh general fund drivers. Here we see uh licenses and permits uh coming increasing by 675,000. That's really being driven by our planning and uh planning uh fees and our building permits as well as a tree removal permits at 180,000. Moving on uh to the next slide, we're uh here I'm really going to focus on the town services or charges for services which is increasing by 967,821. The bulk of this is being uh driven by pass through revenues at 595500. I do want to note that I put uh just a correction. The pass through revenues should uh say $615,500.

The $20,000 difference is that uh in our detailed revenue uh adjustments, uh there was a certain revenue source that didn't say pass through on the revenue side, but it did say it on the expense side. So, I just wanted to make that correction because you we'll be off when we get to the expense slides. Um, so here we again we see pass through revenues at actually should be 615,000 and then plan check revenues at 350,000 really uh leading the increased revenues here. Moving on to the next slide, uh we have our other category which is uh recommended to increase by 692,000. This is mostly being driven by our pension trust fund contribution. As we originally didn't budget this amount, uh we were anticipating a deficit last year, but coming in in a positive, we are asking to make this contribution. Um so this effectively um uh increases our pension contribution. Also, interest uh is trending higher as well. So we're recommending a 345,487 uh adjustment there. Moving on to the general fund expenditure request. So again, these are recommended at approximately 1.4 million. And we look at the town attorney. We're asking for $100,000 for increased outside legal costs. And administrative services overall an increase of 153,305. Uh this is uh mostly being driven by um looks like there uh is a uh unhoused uh services grant that's been uh reduced uh leadership academy here. Uh but the biggest item is really salary and benefit changes to account uh for the uh uh double fill or the additional uh um what's the word I'm looking for? uh for additional services uh from our uh retired finance director to help uh

backfill with the transition uh for myself. It's important to note about half of this will be um uh refunded by our compensate is absent fund. With that moving on, our community development department is requesting $52,500 um in additional expenses. uh the bulk of that 615500 is passed through expenses which means we have the corresponding revenue on the other side and then there's also offset by reductions in contract employee services uh and building inspections for our police department. Overall the request is 93,370. Uh uh the bulk of it here is really related to a police services study and also some increased costs for drug test and a wellness grant. And if we move on to the next slide, we have our parks and public works uh with expenditure request of 200 uh,775. Uh this is really mostly uh driven by a few items here, but miscellaneous services and repairs uh tree pruning service and traffic signalization. On our townwide expenses, we're recommending this increase by 300,191. And this is really mostly driven by the additional 115 pension trust payment for which we saw the offsetting revenue in a previous slide. Uh in addition here we're also um reducing uh $88,000 from the budget for a duplicate uh agreement uh that was included. Um we l found it and wanted to go ahead and reduce the budget uh to align with actuals. That concludes the general fund request. Looking at the other fund request, we're seeing a $96,000 revenue decrease, which is really driven by a reduction in facilities uh maintenance costs for the Saratoga Recreation District based on the current agreement term. Expenditures

are being recommended to decrease by 1,255,561. This is primarily driven by decreases in the equipment replacement fund due to staff identifying which replacements can be deferred in alignment with council direction. Uh this is offset by increases in capital expenses in the JFAR to make use of vehicle registration funds and reserves. An additional 50,000 uh is for uh sound mitigation at L Rinkanada Park. and additionally an expenditures increase of 47,500 in the GFR sorry 437,500 in the Gar interimm community center for various improvements as described in the staff report. So with that, that brings us to our 5-year forecast update and we're going to kind of do a little bit of a repeat of a slide here again. And so this still holds true for the forecast as well that we're going to see an improved financial forecast and conditions. This is driven primarily again by sales tax uh increases. Deficits are still present but have been greatly reduced. And then when we're looking at the updates that have been made um as listed in the staff report, we're really comparing fiscal year 2627 to uh fiscal year 2627 as it was presented as part of the adopted budget. So, with that, as a little reminder, uh this was the five-year projections as of the final budget with a little uh rectangle around our fiscal year 2627 that originally had an estimated uh deficit of 3 uh or use of fund balance of 3.6 million. And then if you're looking out into the out years, you'll see our highest deficit year being fiscal year 2829 at $5 million. When we look at the updated chart as of 2626, again we still have that highlight uh on

the fiscal year 2627 that has dropped from 3.6 to 3.1 million. But in fiscal year 28-29, you'll see uh a larger impact of the additional sales tax revenue where we are forecasting instead of a $5 million deficit, a $2.7 million deficit. And if we go to the next slide, we'll kind of talk about what are the major drivers that are bringing revenue up to 2.1 million. Uh some we've already discussed. So sales tax and measure G. Uh some of these are offset by uh decreases in licenses and permits uh in toot uh but other modest increases in town services and interest earnings as well. Moving on to the expense uh side of the forecast here. Uh some major drivers include uh some de small smaller items decreased uh Kalpers's benefit assumptions. Uh all other benefits decrease by almost half a million dollars. The biggest increase here is related to operating expenditures which are anticipated to increase by 1.7 million for townwide contractually obligated expenditures and a shift to a subscriptionbased model for various public safety equipment. an increase in the town share of retirey medical reimbursement. So with that, that concludes my presentation and I'm available should there be any questions.

Thank you. Questions? Council member Hunis.

Yeah, thank you um for really a very clear report and um terrific communications about what is uh the financial situation with our town. I think we've continued to make um substantial progress in getting our arms around uh financial management and I think this report um conveys that very very well. Um, I did want to um just maybe ask a question about the five-year um because so my understanding is that we have an analysis going on on that fiveyear that could make this projection maybe change sometime in the next 6 months or so. Is that right?

Uh that's correct. So we do have NHA advisers working on an updated forecast, but because we had received some additional information on the sales tax, we wanted to make sure we brought a updated forecast that was in line with some of the information we provided to them as well. Yeah. So, I'm um you know, just conveying that I'm not very concerned about what we're seeing in the five-year until we see that updated report um which I think will present us with some other considerations that we might want to make. Is that correct? Correct.

Okay. Thank you, Council Member Renie. Sure. We we can uh uh open public comment before we really uh get into it. Um any other clarifying questions for staff? No. Okay. Um then we have one public comment and that is from Lee Figo.

Good evening. uh speaking as a long-term resident, not representing any group, um these amendments, these changes have been very interesting and a little uh challenging to follow, but I'm glad to see the work that you're doing and the transparency that's coming through as well. Um it it looks as though the town is reporting a a financial surplus for the current fiscal year and that's really good. But let's look ahead and I think to the point that Council Member uh Udis was making um uh the five-year forecast uh as I saw it shows a structural financial deficit and it ranges between three and 5 million over the each of the the next five years. Um and uh that that uh concern that I have is is really about the spending increases. Are is it really are those increases really serving our town? That's that's the question. Um and uh is it serving the town properly? and how has the uh how well are we managing the funds we have, the investments that we have, and the property that we have in order to keep the the cost down. Um can uh can we please find real substitut substantive solutions such as cost reductions, further cost reductions and not just uh rely on the tax increases? Um uh we also have a challenge in front of us of more than 2,000 new housing units that are to be built in our town. And these are projected to be built in uh sites that were not within the housing element. Um and in they're of a manner, a style, a size, and in locations that are going to be very costly for the town

to to support and maintain. And I think we need to find ways to uh recover or defer um those costs back to the developers uh whatever legal way we can. And um that these costs are of the this new infrastructure requirements for this these new developments are are going to really compound the cost to the other residents in town, not just the new ones coming in. So, please consider all that as you're looking at budgeting going forward and uh how to manage the expenditures. Um, and please let's not just raise uh property taxes on on the current residents to offset that, but rather let's find some other ways of reducing the cost. Thank you.

You all right, I'll go back to Council Benny.

All right. Thank you, mayor. Um, so the when I read this, the first thing that that I looked at was um in our report page four of attachment one, which is the big table of of numbers. And what I'm most interested in is the expenditure side and how are each of the departments doing and I think most of it I can understand except I'm community development parks and public works are the two areas that I'm interested in. the the first question I you know at first I was got lost on the pass through and what that meant and which of these are passed through and your presentation has kind of shifted my understanding a little bit. Let me start with my first question. So I think it just dawned on me and I may have missed it if it's in the report. Um this is not just how the departments have done for half of the year. This is what you're expecting them to do for the full year. And so our revenue looks better. And in the beginning of the year, we cut back on some things. And so now part of these increases or a lot of these increases and speak to the two departments I mentioned are really about going forward for the rest of the year. We want to increase spending in those departments. Is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay. Um, so that that basically says they've done a good job of sticking with their budget and now we realize we have a little extra money and we think these are good places to spend it. Um, explain to me what are pass through revenues? What things fall under pass through? Because when I at first I started thinking, well, if somebody if somebody comes in and gives us some money for a development, they're going to be paying for a plan review. They're going to be paying for engineering services review. So I thinking, okay, well that goes into, you know, that's more than we expected. That might be more revenue and work that went into PPW and CCD, but maybe that's not the case when I start reading some of your slides.

So I think uh pass through revenues uh have more than one definition. So, in terms of uh sometimes you can't do it with a development agreement where you say, "Hey, we have to we're not going to staff up because of this big development that's happening, but we understand there's going to be a lot of uh planning and permit and building things that need to occur as part of a development agreement." You might say, "Hey, we're going to we're going to go out and we're going to render these additional services that we need to complete this this um review that we need to do timely." And then what we would do is we would go out and get those services. you can charge the developer for those services if you have a development agreement. So the revenue basically passes through the town where we have to go make the expense. We already have the offsetting revenue um and so uh they should net out to zero. In other instances where it's not a development agreement, but there is additional work or work that needs to happen within a certain time frame, you may contract with an outside um vendor or um consultant who provides these services. And similarly, you contract with them. You need them to go do a building inspection. You go, "Hey, I need you to do this building inspection." They go do the building inspection. They bill back the town for those services and then the town then uh realizes the revenues that were paid by whoever needed those services down from the deposit we took when they first got there. So, those are kind of the two major ones that I'm aware of uh that that cities or towns normally do.

Okay. So continuing on with that, so under um your explanation of the general fund expenditure pages for community development, you've assigned all of the pass through. You claim there's 615,500 uh pass through expenses. You've assigned it all the community development. I would have expected to see some in parks and public works. So, what I think I'm hearing you say is Parks and Public Works hasn't contracted out any any engineering review or anything like that. So, it didn't turn into a pass through

or at least that they're not asking for additional dollars related to it. So, these are here for community development because they needed there's been additional passroughs that happened and they want to account for those. Council member, it looks like uh the development director um wanted to jump in.

Thank you, mayor, council. Joel Pollson, community development director. So typically to your question, council member Renie, the pass through accounts are where our consultants as Miss Alfaro mentioned which are, you know, environmental consultants, building plan check consultants, consulting architect, consulting arborist, water efficient landscape. Um the other passroughs that are sometimes big are like the objective design standards where we contracted with a firm who's going through that work as well. So there's a number of of those listed uh in you know our pass through account and so we're just trying to match that up seeing an increased uh revenue um andor expenditure depending on the situation and so we're trying to true that up as much as possible.

Okay. Thank you. And and again with the again the parks and public works side, your summary helped me understand where the 200,000 was coming from cuz I thought some of it might have been passed through when it when it's not. And it makes sense what's on there. If I look at parks and public um parks and public uh works on the revenue side, they've they're down money it looks like on engineering review and grading and building inspections. So, does that mean Well, which sounds sort of odd, if we have all this extra development money coming into CCD, why did we have less money coming in for engineering reviews and grading and building inspections in the in the uh PPW department? Look like Director Burnham has an answer to that question.

Thank you. Um Nicole Burnham, director of parks and public works. I may be able to shed a little light on this. I think the revenue decrease that we're looking at is for actual permit fees, not related to pass through. I think the fact that we don't have any pass through revenue changes in midyear is just reflective of the fact that we kind of had anticipated a lot of our revenue. We we passed through almost all of our work um a very significant amount. So we at the beginning of the year sort of had a pretty good handle on what we were going to pass through um and what that revenue was going to be. Okay. So, it but it sounds like we're you know, I'm trying to find the right way to say this, but you're short 135,000 in revenue. So, that meant there were maybe we're overstaffed because we thought there was going to be more work to do. Um, it means that when we prepared our projected budget going into this fiscal year, we made an assumption about how much revenue we were going to generate on permits based on past application revenue and that this year's application revenue has been down. And the application revenue might be single family homes, it could be grading permits, it can be pools. There's a lot of different things that go into it. whereas like our big ticket items related to um like North 40 and some of the larger developments, those are going pretty much straight into pass through accounts. Um and so I think we're seeing, you know, fewer fewer applications somewhere along the line that are coming to us, whereas CDD has it based on their projections that they had at the beginning of the fiscal year, they're seeing more.

Okay. Again, that sort of sounds odd to me that they're doing more business and you're doing less, but I think that's all I I'll stop my questions there. Okay, great. We'll go to Council Member Hudis.

Yeah, I I actually have quite a few questions, but I wanted to start with um the discussion on page 205 of the staff report about uh vehicle replacement internal service fund. Um, and so I had a little trouble following the text here. Um it seems as though our internal service fund was about 3.9 million last year and are we saying that um is staff now saying that we do we're not going to include a uh decrease in in that fund. says, "Upon further research, staff does not believe an expenditure adjustment is needed."

That's correct. After reviewing the expenses, as of the midyear, um staff is recommending that we reduce uh that budget down uh significantly with a little over 2 million in the adopted and we're asking to reduce it by uh about 1 8 million. And so I'm having trouble with the sentence. Upon further research, staff does not believe an expenditure adjustment is needed.

Oh, this is related to Sorry, I misunderstood the question. Uh we're saying that based on uh finance commission had asked the question, should there be a corresponding $1.8 million expenditure reduction in the other funds that utilize the vehicle and replacement fund? So, anybody receiving vehicles or equipment from this fund that get charged out for it upon further review, we looked at that and because we're not fully charging out these expenses on an annual basis, um we're basically trying to create more of a smooth operating expense. So, in some years we collect more and some years we collect less depending on what purchases are coming up uh over the long-term horizon. So when we looked at that model, we felt it wasn't necessary to make an expenditure adjustment in the general fund or any other fund um that would uh receive vehicles or equipment.

Okay. And if I may um just follow up on that uh you know my concern has been in this area for some time um that um you know do we have ex excessive expenditures on vehicles and um you know we I believe we're told that we have an inventory of over 80 vehicles and equipment and um some of that is only used occasionally and um I am concerned that we are incurring uh maintenance costs and storage costs for equipment um that may be in fact obsoleted because of a move to electric um requirements as well. And so, um, I'm I'm I'm really interested in getting our arms around this. And you know, my sort of back of the envelope was that we could uh divest ourselves of half of those vehicles and um you know gain some immediate savings as well as uh the savings on the maintenance costs and the storage costs and and move to more of a rental and lease model on those on some of that equipment. I mean, um, are we going to probe further into that area?

Uh, so it's my understanding we are looking at, um, uh, having, um, someone conduct an audit of our vehicles and equipment. Um, I don't, uh, have an exact date for that yet, but, that is on the horizon. Okay. Um, so I won't harp on that in the budget review because I think there's something coming there that I think could be helpful, but this it does stand out to me. The large uh the large fund that we have to keep and the large number of vehicles have questions in other areas, but I'll defer to other people.

Sure. Okay, I'll um jump in with a couple quick questions. So um so at a very high level and I think I I heard this um but this is everything where we're looking at here is somewhere where there is an incorrect assumption or or is some um something has changed and we need to make an adjustment. Right. So at a at a high level that's what we're dealing with. Yes. Perfect. Um so on the I have three of these items that I wanted to ask about at this time. Um one is the the unhoused um services grant. What was what happened

uh for the unhoused services grant? This is actually a grant we received in the previous year. It had been spent in the previous year, but when we were doing the mid-year analysis, we realized it was still there in the current year. So, we wanted to remove that out. Got it. And did this have something to do with us budgeting for a county grant for three years and not No, that's different. Okay. Okay. Got it. Um transient occupancy tax. Is that largely from my assumption there is that's because we we lost a hotel. Is that that or is it just down generally?

I think it's just down generally. So that's part of that feeds into that. That was already in the assumptions for this year's uh adopted budget. What we're seeing is the numbers are still continuing to come in lower even when we had put that assumption in. Got it. And and are we and this is, you know, hard to know and probably a question for for our economic um vitality manager, but are we anticipating an an increase from some of the, you know, the regional events or is that probably a non-factor? We don't we don't have any information in terms of that at this time.

Okay. Um, and so building this coming year's budget, we will likely reduce even further our assumptions on the transient occupancy tax. I think it's going to depend on how we uh end the year. So, we'll get a few more months underneath our belt here before we have to make the uh assumptions for the proposed budget. So, we'll likely be looking at uh all the different factors that go into toot and kind of trying to decide um what the right number is at that point.

Okay. Um, and then the um and and uh I'll go to council member Hudis after this one um because I realize I'm jumping around now, but on the um uh interim community center. So that's um so that's a fund we have. Correct. And so this is to pull um from that fund to pay for deferred maintenance. It's to pay for uh several repairs at the adult community center. Okay. And what is the the nature of those

mold remediation, window replacement, roof work, roof work, which will allow us to activate a room that's currently being unused and to continue to sustain the structure of the community center. There's a there's a number of other identified repairs that were identified in the 2023 assessment. Um, and this also goes in line with the motion that was passed by the council on April 15, 2023 about the use of ARPA funding. And in going through that motion, there was nothing in the motion that explic explicitly restricted those funds not to be used for the type of expenditures we're proposing. And how much does this leave in the remaining in the fund or

if this were to pass? Approximately 4,000. I can get you the exact number just $4,000. Sorry, 400,000. Where'd it go? Um, okay. Um, great. Thank you. Um, council member Hudis.

Yeah, I I wanted to start with that one. Um, so in reading the description, I don't see anything there that's improvements. I see everything there that is deferred maintenance. And um the discussion intent and the motion was to um for that money to be used for improvements for the public. Isn't that correct? The tenor of the motion surrounded providing use for nonprofits, which is something we've done. And secondly, for the use for enhancing the use of that building, and that was to be done in the 2024 budget. I don't know what action was actually done by the 2024, but in looking at the facility, if we can't maintain and restore the building to its full use, um then we would be looking at impairment to the building. And this is something that we have an obligation under the current lease agreement with LGSR. The council can, if they desire, choose an alternate funding source as opposed to the community center fund, but best practice in finance is you utilize the most restricted source before you go to a less restrictive like the unrestricted general fund. In this case, the community center fund is central to the interim community center and I believe a legitimate use unless the council deems otherwise.

Well, again, I would strongly disagree. It was it was set up for improvements, not for deferred maintenance. But um I'm you know we'll get into discussion after there's a motion but I I uh am pretty clear on what u that discussion and what that motion was for. Um the uh other thing I wanted to come back to on toot and again I'm very disappointed to see uh toot decreasing. I know that we are losing toot because of the the loss of the lodge, but I believe that was in the plan. and where um where budget intersects with policy. Um again, uh I am very concerned that we're not making enough efforts to market Loscatoos as a celebration destination and um that working with partners in the hospitality business and uh the the short-term rentals. Um, so again, we're looking at this year's budget, a decrease. I, you know, think we're going to have to approve that. But I, in terms of looking at the five-year, which is also part of what we're looking at tonight, um, I, uh, am am not supportive of, uh, seeing that decline in our budget because that means that's what we're going to hit. I'd like to see us do something, you know, different in that. So, um the uh it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy that we end up seeing a decrease when Lascato should be the most thriving uh destination for

celebrations in the whole region. And um and that'll boost everything in our community, the retail, the restaurants, uh the the the the value to our residents as well. Also, um my comment is more about the five-year than the than the budget on that one. Um I did have another another one. The um the the concern that I have um is again about uh some text in here that talks about the three anticipating a $3 million um uh $3 million receipt for selling real estate property. And um again, I don't think there's a budget item here, but I think there's a concern that that money would get uh consumed in our day-to-day operations when um my comment on that is that that needs to be something for community benefit. And so I'm my question is are we tackling the use of those funds tonight or is that just a comment that's in the staff report that it might be coming?

Yeah, it's just a comment in the staff report. We're not uh handling the the property has not sold yet. So those funds have not come in. Okay. and and um you know with regard to that uh my own view is that we shouldn't even sell that property if we don't consider putting it to good community benefit the proceeds being put to good community benefit. And so, um, I hope we'll get to that in our next discussion about the budget, um, uh, where we talk about the proceeds from this or will it be just in the real estate transaction that we'll talk about it?

I believe the sale of the property does need to come back, uh, to the council.

The sale does need to come back to the council. The council has already taken action to direct the sale of said property with no restriction on the use of the funds at this time. But the council can designate any proceeds in how whatever manner they desire with regards to the building. There are limitations that when the town sells a building that has restricted funds that were used to acquire that property, those must go back into said funds. So, for example, if you had a special housing fund that paid for a piece of property and there's revenue that's returned, it must go back to that source. In researching this, we did not find a community benefit. I mean, I guess I should reframe that. did not find a restricted revenue source that was used for that building. So, the desire to make it a community benefit um is a policy desire of the council that you would be establishing.

Yeah, it would be hard to find that it goes back to the early 1900s. So, um it was, you know, it was a firehouse. Definitely community benefit. It was a museum for many years. Definitely community community benefit. Um, so we're going to have to come back to that one again, I think. Um, the other I had one more question. Um, and that is on uh the overall um need to to make an adjustment of the 1.35 million. Um, if I could just maybe get some clarity on that. Uh it it it seems as though um that 1.35 million um is just to essentially take funds from one department to another. Um is there really the need to make it a budget adjustment um uh of 1.35 million? So when we look at the pass through revenues about half of that amount, a little less than half is really related to pass pass through. So you want to account for the revenue and the expense side. So on those I would say um because you want to account for both, you would want to make those adjustments. When we look at our year-end projections, uh we're looking to end our expenditure category or expenditures uh lower than our budgeted amount. Um we ask departments to make projections for where they're going to end the fiscal year in January um with five months left to spend. So we do ask them to provide us a most accurate uh forecast. Um but if we end the year um they may still need those funds. So they're making the assumptions in January for what may happen for the next 5 months. So we don't actually come and make a budget adjustment unless we know something has changed either to reduce it or to increase it. So if we're asking for the

adjustment, it's something that we've seen that's different from the trajectory we had at final budget and that's why those requests are being made at this time. So you're saying it is absolutely necessary uh to do the 1.35 million. You were saying there's no other alternative.

Let me step in there. No, I can't say it's absolutely necessary to do anything. What I can say is the way we our practice has been is as we're looking at the budget, we're making estimates about what is needed in the meteor for specific items and based on information that we know. What do we sweep away because there's transactions that you can see that we're reducing in the budget. And then we're also at the same time asking departments to estimate what how they believe they're going to end a year as a mechanism to assist us in our budget planning processes. Had we not done that second component, there would be no ability to even ask the question whether or not you need these funds. We if the council desires not to make any changes, then I can reconfigure the entire budget around zero additional dollars coming in and then making operational decisions on what activities we would be concerned about not having funds available towards the end of the year and just suspend those activities.

Thank you. Um, and one more question on the franchise fees. Um, do we, and I don't know if you would know the answer to this, um, do we anticipate the we have two large Frontier wireless um, locations in Loscatos and Frontier just got acquired by Verizon. Do we anticipate that having any impact on the ability for us to collect franchise fees or or anything else?

That I don't know off the top of my head, so I'll have to get back to you on that. Um, yeah, I'm curious how we, you know, more bigger question I think than than the confines of this discussion, but I'm curious if we anticipate that that impacting, you know, the community in any way. Um, because I think both of those are very key locations and I think one we might even have an interest in. So, at this time, I didn't even know they got acquired. So, thank you for that information.

Yeah. Yeah. Just a few weeks ago. So, um, uh, great. Um, okay, Council Member Renie. Um, so you might have said something, but you know, the repackaging of the information. I was kind of hard to listen and and think about everything in here. I you one thing that was a surprise to me was to see the big change in the sales tax revenue. Lascatos has never been that strong on sales tax. We always seem to be losing a little bit and behind everybody else. And so when I see a a change of 1.6 6 million. That's unusual. I've don't know that I've seen that in the 11 plus years that I've been here. So, I'm trying to understand, is this a change going forward? Was this a one-time lucky item? Um, did the way that sales tax calculated or internet sales tax change or something? Why are we at 1.6? Are we going to stay there is basically my question.

Uh so to the first question, we do anticipate this is not a one-time item that it will carry through. It's part of why we're seeing the improvements uh in the forecast. And it's really driven by two uh major components. One is related to our switch in our sales tax consultant. So we have someone different looking at our numbers, forecasting those numbers out. and the other is due to some additional new businesses um that have come into the town that are having a positive impact on sales tax. Yeah. But if I can follow up, so our actual in 2425 was just under 7 million and now we're this year at 7.8 million. That still seems like a bigger growth than I've typically seen.

It's the nature of the businesses. However, we have not received any of this sales tax. These are projections based on how our consultant anticipates allocations that would occur to v these type of businesses in various cities. That still can change between now and the end of the fiscal year. And so we project that with some level of confidence that we will receive those revenues, but it's not an absolute guarant receive as much. However, based on the projections of our consultants, the number that we baked into the budget in the midyear is on the lower end of the range the consultant believes that these businesses would generate for the town.

And again, ask I'll ask this question a different way. This is brick andmortar sales tax or internet sales tax bump. I let me just say it this way. I don't want to say anything further for fear of providing confidential information about the nature of our sales tax. But I will say that the nature of the business transactions would be of an ongoing nature that would be affected by economic downturns and upswings.

Okay. Okay. and did our consultant I think we've talked about this somewhere else but you know we're our housing element sites and our builder's remedy sites are going to wipe out a bunch of commercial areas that considered you know clearly this year they aren't going to be gone but you it sounds like you're planning to use these improved numbers going into the five-year forecast and in 5 years many of these businesses will be gone with the housing sitting on top of them.

No, they're they're not included in the projections. However, we need to understand that when we since we have access to data that's granular that allows us to understand the total gross revenue and net sales tax that we would receive on those businesses. I we fluctuate dayto day with businesses coming and going and and the majority of the businesses that tend to be impacted the dollar amount swings are not necessarily massively material. There are some businesses that do generate significant amount of sales tax in our town about 25% of our 25 businesses generate about 50% of the total sales tax uh for the town. And so if you lose five or six businesses because of a development, some of that could be made up in other in other businesses elsewhere, but the variance between two isn't it's not a million-doll swing that you would see potentially.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead. I don't really have more questions. I'm willing to put a motion on the table.

Sure, please. Um uh so first part was receive so there's no motion required for that. I believe there's a motion required for three uh parts or for um to authorize the budget adjustment of uh 3,581,888 in revenues and 1,350,141 in increases and expenses as recommended in the uh midyear budget report. Um, I would uh add one thing to the motion and that is that the source of the money for the deferred maintenance repairs on the uh on the adult recreation center. um be taken from the uh if possible from the uh streets and transportation fund if it's not restricted um or from the general fund if it is uh it's not available. So that's a motion.

Um so we would not be able to take it from the streets and transportation fund. You could take it from the general fund. I might um propose a another option which is our fund 411 or our GRA that is in specifically for the um uh community center. So, uh, when we look on page, I'm kind of where I'm getting these numbers. Page 33 of attachment one, um, uh, it's, uh, capital project fund, um, kind of a summary. You'll see that the GFAR or with fund 411 currently has 16,974945. That's where they began the year with their fund balance. If you go ahead and you add the $4.4 $4 million in budgeted revenues and you deduct the about 16.8 million in budgeted expenditures, then you're left with the projected ending fund balance of about um 4,497642. If you were to then further reduce it by moving this expense out of that fund versus the 412 or the uh GR for the community center, you'd be looking at an estimated ending fund balance of about $4 million. So there is sufficient there if you wanted to keep it within the capital. Um if that's a just a suggestion I wanted to make instead of using an assign.

I think that's wise to do that to use capital rather than operating for that. Uh yes because it's considered a capital expense and again as as uh the town manager mentioned earlier more restrictions on the capital fund. So you want to use those dollars when projects become available to use those versus the unassigned fund balance that has less restrictions. Okay. And I just want to make sure I get to the right page for that or do I need to restate anything in my motion?

The motion's clear to me that that it's uh authorizing the expenses except 400. The interim is pulling from the uh I'm sorry, the repairs are pulling from the GR. Okay. Um we have a motion. Um, Councilman Bry,

I I'll second the motion. I I understand staff's perspective of using the mo the most restricted funds available, but in this case, we restricted the funds for a council priority. Um, so we don't actually want to do that because we're not following the council priority. We can always unrestrict these funds if we want because they're not restricted by money coming from uh the state for um you know streets or roads or anything like that. It's a self-inflicted restriction. So I agree with with keeping the money there that's meant for a council priority and using the GRA. So I second that motion. Vice Mayor Risto.

Um I don't share the thought that we shouldn't be using the money for the um interim community center to fix up the interim community center. And you know, we I don't know what we're going to be using the money for, but if we use half of it to get it in shape so that we can do further improvements and open up spaces that are unusable, that seems like that's forwarding the interim community center. So, I don't know if I can support the motion or can we bifurcate it where we just Go ahead,

Council Benny. I I'll I'll say I I disagree because my understanding when we made this I think matches Council Member Hudis was we want to do improvements to the center, not just keep doing maintenance. And if we keep bleeding off all the money for maintenance items, which what we've we've pretty much done, we've already spent a bunch of money on maintenance and maybe we did a little bit of improvements, um we'll end up with nothing. And then what was the point of our our council priority? So, I'm I'm still I think Mr. Hudis is making a good motion in this case.

Yeah, I'll chime in that I have I have mixed feelings on this. Um, you know, uh, when, uh, Council Member Hudis and I worked on this, um, you know, interim community center fund, my understanding of the dollars is that they would be for improvements to the space to make it, you know, we we have this uh, grand and and worthy idea of developing a new community center. And um this I think was sort of done with the understanding that that we're still about a decade away from um you know that project potentially opening. And so how do we make our existing community center as inviting, welcoming and usable as possible? And so, um, you know, my I think two years ago or a year ago, if if this idea would have come up, I would have been a lot more, um, opposed to it. I'm The reason I'm I'm sort of lukewarm to the idea is that I don't know, we don't have anything in our capital budget to speak of that I'm aware of that programs this money. And so I the I'm I'm curious what the current you know we had several conversations about this and I you know I I had this vague idea that we can open up the front of the building some to make it more inviting and and make it more of a community center. There were you know a few small projects done. I really appreciate the the use um of some of the money to sort of jumpst start the the nonprofit space um which I think has been has been good, but I don't know where we're envisioning the rest of the money going and I don't want it to just sit in this fund for the next 10 years. And so, um again, perhaps a bit outside of the scope of of this conversation. Um, but

I'm curious what what folks on the council think this money should be programmed for. Um, because I'm not convinced it needs to be programmed for, you know, deferred maintenance, but I I do think it should be programmed for something. Yeah. Council member than Hudis.

Okay. Mr. Hughes probably has a better Council Member Hughes probably has a better thought, but you know, things like mold remediation is definitely not an improvement. That's that's a maintenance item. I mean, part of what was mentioned was we're going to have to start taking away parts of the building. It we've already lost part of the building. We're going to start taking away parts of the building if we don't. That's maintenance to me. things like, you know, I don't know what the right answer is, but improve furniture so it's more comfortable, adding a a snack room. I don't know what the right answers are, but these are things that are improvement. Um, if it's adding, you know, probably better ADA access is an improvement versus a maintenance item. um uh enhancing the large room so it can be used in for more activities or in more comfortable activities. A better uh sliding divider, things like that are improvements versus making sure the building doesn't fall down. And and I don't know what the right answer on improvements are, but making sure the building fall down's not enhancements.

Yeah. and and the topic of deferred maintenance did come up in 2023. Um, we knew about these issues some time ago and um, it, you know, I I very much appreciate staff coming forward and saying here's here's the amount we need to have to fix this and I'm very supportive of fixing the roof and uh, that's probably the biggest item that's in there. but it's fixing. It's not improving. And so, um, we need to find and and you know, across the board, we don't have really great process and funding for deferred maintenance that we have on all of our buildings. Um, and we need to address, you know, that issue. We can't keep taking from the general fund or taking from, you know, Peter to pay Paul on this. We really need to come up with a comprehensive way to do that. But where we are right now is decrementing this would take away money from improvements that our residents would actually see and we have the money elsewhere. So I I we would end up um with, you know, half of the money left for improvements. Um and there's no need to do that. And so, you know, I think we should hang on to that money for improvements. I don't think we made a full force effort to really see what we could do with an interim community center. It kept getting smaller and smaller in scope down to, you know, one little area. And I believe there was also an ADA bathroom, but we were able to receive a grant for that. So, we didn't have to use uh some of the monies for that as well. So, um but this is this is not the

time, I think, to take that money away when we have other sources of funding. Yeah, Vice Mayor Sto,

thank you. I mean, you both make good points. I guess my concern is that if we take this money from the general fund, we have a lot of deferred maintenance and so we're potentially taking it away from something else where we might need the money. Um, I do have a question. If this maintenance work and this repair work triggers further ADA work that's not anticipated, like parking lot or something, then would if it triggers ADA improvements, then would the funds be able to come from the interim community center or would that come from somewhere else? So, in in my mind, um that's an improvement and and we probably need to put into, you know, our hopper of looking at what other improvements we could actually do because I think we really fell short. And um while it may be a long time before we get a new community center, the the community has articulated their needs pretty well in terms of the kind of uses that they would like to see. And I think we could come back and take a look at that list and see well what can we do um while we're pursuing the process of a new community center. So I'm very much in favor of putting some effort into to looking at improvements including ADA improvements.

Yeah. Town manager

sounds like the council is split on how to use this fund. So my recommendation is we remove this in its totality, approve the remaining revenue and expenditures and remove any change to the community center fund and any reallocation. If we're going to allocate general fund or gar other money to some capital improvement deferred maintenance, I don't want here at the dis making a decision solely on the basis of our future desires with the community center and in its isolation but be looking at the grander CIP. Uh there are other issues that we may want to address. It may be a parking lot in that location, but we've also had the conversation about are we throwing money into a facility that we're trying to improve that doesn't necessarily result in the long-term goal that we're trying to achieve for the services. And so I'd like to have a chance to talk with staff with regards to how do we want to prioritize CIP and it may be something we push for the 26 27 budget instead. Council member Hudis,

can those repairs wait? I mean, I I think some of those thing we knew about some of those things, you know, three, four years ago. Can we really push them off? There's a lot of things that I wish we could do sooner. I mean, we we've been sitting on this, I think, in your your words to for a couple of years that we've known about it. We'll figure out a way to do what needs to be done immediately, and if I have to come back, I will. But if we're going to spend roughly a half million dollars on some type of capital improvement out of a GFAR or unrestricted source, I want to be able to consult with staff to decide is that the best use of what we would put the first half million dollars towards. I know there are a lot of other significant concerns that we have predominantly a couple of trees that are large scale that may fall on houses that I want to make sure we eliminate those risks if that's where we want to allocate funding.

Council member Badami. A question for staff. So, is is the staff um exposed to mold now where it could become a health issue? Mold is prevalent in almost every single building. It doesn't necessarily means it's hazardous and whatnot, but it is precautionary when you do receive a report that mold needs to be remediated that you should remediate it. And that was the intent. But I think if we're now triggering funding sources changes, I may just decide to do mold remediation and take it from an existing internal budget with no additional allocation from the council and forego the additional capital improvements until the next year's budget. Thank you, Council Member.

Yeah, I don't want to delay the repairs that I've talked about. Um maybe the better option is just let it go as proposed by staff and worry about funds later on for capital improvements. My I have a question for for staff which is we have this this again large pot of money in the interim community center fund. um staff in the budget in in midyear here um is recommending moving some of that money from or I guess the project um and some of that money from tier one to tier uh from tier two to tier one in the CIP. Are there other improvements that you could anticipate making that would warrant it being in tier one that that you're aware of or anything that in that space that that you've anticipated? Um, you know, sort of based on our conversations from the last couple of years with this this money sitting there or is it or the greatest, you know, or is it just deferred maintenance? Um, I think that's a cha bit of a challenging question to answer. There are a lot of needs for this building, including some work on the HVAC system. There was some plumbing work. So, um, the roof needs to be repaired as part of because that's the reason their mold has been identified. windows need to be. So, it's hard to know exactly where to draw the line, but we are quickly going to to to Council Member Risto's point, run up against the need to make ADA improvements um if we put too much money into the building or or aren't balanced with the improvements. And I think the mold and the roof clearly were not going to trigger ADA. we were still working to resolve the window question, but it's a there's a balance to be had here um in

terms of what we do for that building. So, yes, there are other needs. Yes, there are other improvements um but these were the ones that kind of rose to the top most immediately based on the work we have done.

Understood. Okay. Thank you. I I remember in the the 2023 or 2024 budget, um there was a a slew of, you know, I think it was something like $1.5 million of potential improvements or deferred maintenance in this building that the council, you know, could sort of think about. And so I think you know when we come back for budget I think it'd be helpful to understand the variety of options for this space both from a deferred maintenance standpoint and from potential improvements. Um because my you know the fear that I think the the council brought up at the time when um uh council member Hudis and I came up with our uh you know the big idea for this fund was that the money would just sit and I was pretty confident it wouldn't and and now it sort of has. And so um I I don't want the money to continue sitting regardless of what we do with it. So, I'm I'm sort of I'm open on on how this money could or should be spent, but um you know, it sounds like we have a variety of of uh uh directions to go. I I'm the town manager suggestion sort of makes sense to me that that we if we can pause on this and wait, you know, if some of these repairs can wait until budget, then maybe we allocate the money then. Um yeah, I I don't know. And maybe if there's, you know, big big ones, mold and and roof that we could do now without triggering ADA, maybe that's, you know, uh, the way to go. So, um, I I can also offer a compromise base on the discussion. you could take the action that's recommended by the staff and add to that motion um prior to the end of the fiscal year if projections demonstrate a fund balance surplus that we first replenish the community center fund to its current balance. Um so therefore we get the improvements done.

It's coming from the community center fund and if we end up to the good which is what we project and hope um we're back to the full funding. But I would ask that we need to start having a conversation about the community center fund. I know council member Renie talked about it being our priority. It is not our strategic priority. I think it was the desire of the council at the time we were allocating ARPA to put it towards an enhancement of that facility in some fashion with it to be determined. And I know there's been a number of discussions outside of the realm of the public about a future community center. And it just seems like there is this shadow process about a of priority that the council may desire to put on the books at some future time. I think at this point I'd rather get the improvements done and I'd rather just replenish the resource and then you determine later if it's something and how you want to allocate those fundings in the future. I don't have clear direction. I go back and I look at the 2023. Normally when you're restricting a source from what you cannot use it for, we're explicit about that. I know there's intent behind that, but in my mind, bring in a room that's currently not able to be utilized because of a condition that is caused by the failure of the capital to me is a capital improvement. This is not just deferred maintenance. This I besides most of the maintenance internal of the building is an obligation of the lease not the town. Our obligation is the actual capital which involves the roofs, the structures, the external that are causing the problem on the internal. I think that's a good idea. you have a motion on the table unless the motion maker wants to withdraw it.

No, I' I'd like to see where the motion goes. Um I I uh understand that there are other ways to achieve this um goal, but I think that I would like to see number one moving forward on the uh repairs, you know, the deferred maintenance, the items that are here, they came into this because they were a priority. Um not because we happen to have funds available. we happen to have funds available elsewhere and I'd like to see us uh move forward and uh take care of the issues and I think um we have the means to take care of them at the same time to uh come back later to look at um how we might come up with some uh better improvements for that community center that our community needs so badly. So, I I I'm not uh I'd like to just see where this motion plays out.

Vice Mayor Risto. Um well, if I may, I'd like to make a substitute motion. You're of course welcome to.

Okay. So, I move to authorize the budget adjustments of $3,581.88 in estimated revenues and $1,350,141 in increased expenses as recommended in the midyear budget report. um with the caveat that um up to the amount stated could be used for the capital improvement slash remediation of the community center and if we do come out ahead at the end of the year that that money be replenished into the um interim community center fund as described by the town manager earlier if I'm stating it correctly. So let me repeat this back and tell me it's correct. The motion is to authorize staff the staff recommendation on both revenue and expenditures presented in the mid-year report and to author as presented and as we incur a surplus by the end of the year to replenish the community center fund up to the stated amount current balance in the budget.

Correct. Council ready. I second the last motion, but I'll second this one.

All right. Um, I I'll just chime in that I'm I'm in philosophical alignment with with Council Member Hudis on this um generally, but I I I think this is a good compromise and and staff's concern about um you you know, this perhaps not being the highest and best use for our our GFAR is concerning. Um, and so I think this this is a good compromise, but I'm I'm willing to to hear everybody's thoughts. Yes, Council Member Bami.

So, I would be interested in supporting um staff's recommendation with the wording um provided um by the town manager as a compromise.

Council member Renie, then Hudis. And and I actually was kind of surprised when the the town manager said that improvements to the building was was not our strategic priorities because it's been kind of a council priority to do that. And I specifically brought our goals, core goals and strategic priorities with me tonight to keep referring to. And I I I it's correct. it's not really there. There's a core goal of quality public infrastructure and I think that's what the town manager is most worried about. We've got a lot of public infrastructure to keep at a quality level. So I I I understand his comments better after thinking through and and relooking at these. And so that's why I was willing to to kind of change to the second motion and second it and support it.

Council member Hus. So my question is um when would we uh be able to take up this question about replenishing the fund? Based on the motion on the table, I would take that as a directive for the budget and prior to the end of June 30th program an additional $430,000 in change into the budget to the extent that the surplus that we have at the end of the year exceeds that $430,000 number. So when would that be considered? That prior to fiscal year end.

Okay. I would imagine, you know, once the administrative services director can project what our potential surplus will be in the end of the year, making that budgetary change before the end of the fiscal year so that when the ACER is produced, the ACE will show demonstrate an $800 and something,000 balance in the community center fund.

Yeah. Given that timing and the urgency of starting the repairs, um I can support the motion. Okay, great. Um, I just want to throw in two um, uh, last pieces of for me. One is, um, I don't think it needs to be in the motion, but I just want to be clear that that I would I would really appreciate hearing, um, what our options for improvements are to the community center and and the rest of this funding when we come back for for budget. Um, and then this is, you know, again, silly, not totally part of the motion, but I I am I'm very curious how the the frontier deal might affect um the town of Los Scatos because I think that really is those are two key locations and so um I think that's worth considering um as we enter budget.

Let me speak a little bit to I love the conversation. I wasn't here for the 2023. I think we need more in-depth conversation regarding this topic because based on the motion, what was intended to occur prior to the 2024 year was a discussion of the improvements that needed to occur. I don't know if those have occurred and if they did occur, obviously the improvements did not occur in the building outside of some HVAC improvements. And so I think that's a larger conversation because the direction was to have it a broader input about the improvements associated with that building. The only thing I've seen come from that has been uh work being done towards a future community center, but not necessarily what improvements need to go into the existing one.

I think the assistant town manager wanted to chime in and then I think I council member Hudas and I can also jump in on we wrote a memo that was to this effect.

Um thank you Katie Nimmer, assistant town manager. Um, in terms of I think along the lines of some of the conversation tonight, there was a focus more on not the maintenance aspect but what are the actual improvements. Uh, there was a whole community process done in from CHSSC and the council and um, there were several items selected to move forward with and along with the notion that you know we don't want to invest so much in a building that might get redone possibly if that is the will. Um but uh so we there were certain things that granted they were smaller dollar items. They were you know the rotational partner space, the large hall divider, uh improving some of the safety lighting, things of that nature. And so but it wasn't the m to your point, it wasn't the maintenance discussion. We did have a table and a list of things that needed to be done. Um but those were not taken up at that time. So, I'll just chime in. I think perhaps then that, you know, in the next month or two, it could be worth having a discussion on that funding specifically and the adult recreation center more generally. Um, you know, in light of all of this.

Yeah, Vice Mayor Stow,

thank you. I mean, I just want to be clear. I'm really supportive of this present adult community center that we have and I think that there are things we can do to improve it, but until we get the basic underpinnings of it, you know, remediate the mold, get the roof, you know, fix it up so that any future additions we decide are worth doing to this building make sense. And so, you know, I think if we get the I hate to see money sitting there when we've got a strong need and not spend it there. And then if we have extra money and we can replenish the fund, I will be very eager to see how we can improve this present community center that we have in the interim.

I I'm going to try to tie this back into the midyear. there's only $800,000 that is I think to do right by that building that is not sufficient. So in 2023 numbers just the facility assessment estimate over the next over the total 25 years from that report is in excess of $2 million. And when you look at that the some of the repairs we're contemplating today in the midterm aren't in that report. When we start to look at the improvements, if the council at some future time considers a new community center, that time window is significant. It's not going to happen in the next 3 years. And so if we're looking at improvements in the current community center, we have to contemplate if they're going to be significant improvements, which it sounds like historically we've been trying not to make anything significant from a change in service provision, then we're looking at potential debt financing as the best alternative. And if we're looking at debt financing, we need to look at that building from the perspective of it's a community center today. And if a new community center is built and we choose that to be the new community center that whatever improvements we do today or over the next few years have to sustain that building in some alternate use or else it doesn't justify making significant improvements to it. And you get back to the quandry that the mayor raised about I don't want to just be sitting on a pot of money hoping to make improvements but we never get to actually making the improvements. Well, we're in the situation that you may not make the improvements because you're looking at an alternate path. So, how do you balance those two is a question the council has to grapple with.

Agreed. And I would just say I think it's it's worth grappling with at some point. Um I think it's worth having the discussion. So, um yes, I just wanted to clarify the motion for the record. The original motion um referred to a description by the town manager and the town manager clarified and there was an agreement. So, I just wanted to clarify the exact wording of the motion. I have something that I think is accurate um that I could put on display if that's helpful. And this is the substitute motion. Substitute motion, correct?

Please go ahead. We always benefit from the motion being displayed. Ah, we have dollar signs now. Okay. Um, I believe that is what I stated. If the numbers are right,

I think the number right number.

Oh, no. It's the numbers are not right. It should be $3,581,888 for the first one and then the second number is correct. Don't you wish we had three billion in estimated revenues? Need to get rid of those zeros. Okay. Oops. Um, I believe that is exactly what my motion is.

That's my understanding. Okay. Okay. Um, are we all on the same page? Any final questions? And I will call the question. All those in favor? I.

Any opposed? None. Passes unanimously. Well done. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Uh, okay. Great. Um, that was our last item of the evening. So, we will move to council matters. Um, I'll begin with council member Renie. So, uh, the one item I have to report on was I attended the Silicon Valley Clean Energy, um, board meeting, uh, since our last council meeting, last regularly scheduled council meeting, um, items of interest, we did appoint members to our committees and, um, council member Risto as an alternate was appointed to the finance committee. Um, we also approved a change, so it may be of interest. The SB707 changes the Brown Act requirements for multi-jurisdictional and there are now some options that if you're more than 20 miles away, you don't have to um put a notice up at your location, although you need to be noticed on the the agenda, which is quite helpful for people traveling. Um and it also if for some reason they are traveling and the meeting goes off you don't their location goes off it's not a public location and so the meeting can continue. I think we talked about our their interpretation is it had to stop but based on the new law now it doesn't. I think our attorney interpreted differently for our own meetings. Um, but I thought I would just mention those that we adopted those changes um that uh SB77 allowed us into our multi-jurisdictional meeting um uh

meetings. You council member Hudith.

Um so I had a number of meetings. Um first Oh. Um, I met with uh John Cowan of El Camino Health and discussed um health services in Loscatos and uh had a long conversation about um aging in place and how um those kind of services might be provided um along a number of lines similar to the village concept. Um, I met uh with the West Valley service providers actually that was um at West Valley Community Services building and had um a very good review of services for seniors that were presented there. Um, I attended a memorial for Larry Arzy who on the 12th who was um one of our uh leading and brilliant business people um uh from Loscato's porch and um a uh very strong member of our community and um very uh touching memorial service uh for him. Uh then I had a meeting of the Loscatoos Thrives Foundation um executive committee. Um and then I wanted to just make a comment about last uh council meeting that we had, the last regular council meeting. I had a chance

to listen to the tape of our last uh council meeting. And I'd like to apologize to my fellow council members about some remarks that I made when the last item of the evening came up um regarding approval of the north 40 um minutes. Um I think I was out of line in attributing motivation uh I think I said enthusiasm for the north 40 development um to some of the council members about the reasons for their vote. concerning the accuracy of the minutes of that meeting. Um, I realize that it's never a good or civil pro uh practice to assume that you know the motivation of why somebody votes in a way that you cannot understand and I regret the remarks that I made um at that moment and apologize to the council for that.

Thank you um Vice Mayor Risto. Uh, thank you, Council Member Hes. Um, let's see. I I attended the Finance Commission meeting last Monday, um, which is part of the reason why I had no questions tonight, but I, um, am thankful that my fellow council members brought up a number of excellent questions on the last item. On the 11th, um, Council Member Badami and I attended, um, conceptual design advisory committee meeting where there's a proposed assisted living um, facility potentially on the very northern edge of the North 40 next to the freeway. Um, on the 12th, I attended the VTA policy advisory committee where we got an update on the Sunnyvale Perry Park shuttle. So, in Sunnyvale, they've got a shuttle that is free from 7 am to 7 pm. Um, goes around certain um it's on demand and it goes around certain areas of Sunnyvale. And it led to a discussion of us probably agendaizing in the near future a discussion with VTA about all the different micromobility shuttles in a variety of cities across Santa Clara County. So, we can sort of understand what kind of last mile solutions are coming forward. what are communities doing and how do they interface with VTA and how can Los Scatos do something like that maybe. So, um anyway, good discussion coming up and then uh let's see, I don't need to go into all that. Um and then later I attended the city's association uh legislative legislative action committee, although council member Moore stood in for me for part of that because I was still at the pack meeting. Um and then on the 15th I um in the place of the mayor attended the history club donor brick garden ded dedication. So in front of the history

club there's kind of a garden area with the signage and there's bricks that people can purchase um to help fund uh the clubhouse uh capital improvements. And it's a beautiful building that's really nice for receptions, celebrations. I met a couple that had their wedding reception there 20 years ago and they did have a beautiful party there. So, if you're interested in helping fund that at the um Loscatos History Club website, there is the uh donor brick form and for $250 you can help support this and get your name on there. Um, on February 5th, I participated in a board meeting of the West Valley Storm Water Authority. And later that same day, I also participated in a meeting of the West Valley Solid Waste Management Authority. On February 11th, along with the vice mayor, I participated in a meeting of the Conceptual Development Advisory Committee. And on the 15th, I participated in the dedication ceremony at the history club of Lascatus along with the vice mayor where she delivered a very um thoughtful speech um in support of the club that resonated quite well with the attendees.

Great. Uh and I um have had a number of meetings. Um I participated in roundts with West Valley leaders both with Supervisor Abbe Koga and Congressman Sam Licardo. It's great that that our regional leaders are are um taking the West Valley seriously. I think that hasn't always necessarily been the case. So, um that's welcomed and and they seem to be listening well to to our concerns. Um attended the Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action Awards where I was honored to present um uh an award to one of our Loscatoos High School students who has been involved in um lots of great climate advocacy work. Um I uh met with the leaders of the Saint Vincent Depal Society um to discuss uh homelessness services in Loscatos among a variety of things and um uh we're very very fortunate to have such a great group of leaders um that are so dedicated to our community. Um I attended a number of VTA meetings including meeting with the uh general counsel of VTA um and and some of the the folks there. Um I I will say, you know, uh we are very fortunate to have a lot less zeros on some of our lawsuits than uh than VTA does. Um uh the West Valley Sanitation District, um met a few times and we have after a long process um selected Tim Keezer, who is the current city manager of Grass Valley, to be the new um uh executive for the West Valley Sanitation District. He'll begin at the end of March. um uh which is great because he has to relocate here. So glad to have him starting soon. Uh and I think that's a that's a very good thing for the district. The district has been without an executive for almost a year and so um uh it's a it's a very good thing. Um and uh lastly, I attended the city's association board meeting. Um a lot of interesting discussions. Um but

I'll just highlight that the city's association um I think intelligently this year um selected just three key priorities um that I think they will be able to make progress on um which are emergency preparedness, disaster preparedness. Um number two is ebike e- motorcycle safety. Um some cities claim to not have this as much of an issue as as much of an issue as as we do, but I think it's it's definitely spread. Um, and so, um, I'm glad that that's something that that the city's association is going to be, um, taking a look at. And the third is public safety, including flock cameras and privacy, um, which is going to be an interesting issue for the city's association to tackle because there's a lot of different perspectives on that topic. And so, um, we'll, uh, see where that goes. Um, uh, great. I will turn now to the town manager and town attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just one update regarding our residential alarm ordinance. Since the adoption of the ordinance in September 2025, the town has received feedback from residents regarding the registration fee and aspects of the online registration program. In response, the police department conducted a review of the program. As a result of that review, the residential alarm registration fee will be waved through June 30th, 2026. Residents are still required to register their alarms. Um, however, it will be done for free through the end of the fiscal year and those who have already paid the fee will receive a credit towards their 2027 renewal. Before any future fee is considered, the town will complete a full cost analysis to ensure the fee reflects only the actual cost of administering the program. So, there is a potential that that fee may be subject to change. The online registration process has been simplified. A frequently asked questions has been posted to the town's website and a dedicated phone number and email have been established to assist residents who may have questions. Lastly, the police department will continue to monitor the program and provide updates to the council as needed. We fully understand that when we implement a new program, they don't necessarily all go super smooth and but we are uh very thankful that when we do identify issues that we make the changes necessary to make it more convenient for our residents. With that, Mr. I'll turn it back to you.

Thank you. Um, do we have any updates from the town attorney? There are not. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Um, uh, well, with that, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you all.