Town Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening everyone. I'm going to call this regular meeting of the Town Council to order on September 1st and we'll begin with a roll call vote.

Council Member Enni?

Here.

Council Member Hudes?

Here.

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

Here. With all five members present, we have a quorum. I'll turn to my colleague, Council Member Hudes, who'll make a quick announcement.

I'll make the announcement on Council Member Hudes' behalf. Council Member Hudes is participating remotely pursuant to government code section 54953.8.3, which permits remote participation when there is just cause.

Great, thank you very much. And due to having a council member remote, we'll be taking all roll call votes tonight. This evening, we have Susan Burnett to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Come on up.

and and i just wanted to clarify the reason for the just cause um i believe it was a medical emergency and i just wanted to confirm that there's nobody over the age of 18 and council member who this is

That's correct. Thank you.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Okay. That brings us to the consent calendar. And I will look to the council to see if there are any comments or anyone willing to pull an item from consent. Yep.

Thank you. I wanted to make a quick comment. I don't necessarily want to pull them. There were two items. No, actually, yeah, two items. One of them on item seven. I just wanted to clarify that by relabeling the parking spaces by the high school to be preferential permit parking during school days only, we're actually opening those spaces up to other uses outside of school hours? Because right now, yeah, initially when I saw this, I thought we were restricting them, but I think they've been overly restricted and now the parking spaces will have signage that indicates that outside of school days and school hours, any of the public can park for 90 minutes, is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay, thank you. And related to that item, I noticed that on Brooklyn Court, on the non-school parking side, the curbs are now painted red on the main street side of Brooklyn. And they didn't used to be painted red. So was that meant to allow cars to back out or to prohibit parallel parking on those curbs? I would need to get back to you on that. Okay. But I can do that. Just give me a little bit of time. Okay, thank you. And then I had a question about... Oh, goodness. Oh, item six with the resolution to summarily vacate a public service easement. I had a couple of questions about that. I just wanted to verify, is this being done at the... request of the owner? Yes, it is. Okay. And then I just had, I looked at the map. It seems like the public easement kind of dead ends into a property. Is there any thought that this, by abandoning this easement and allowing the property only to potentially develop in that area, would that cut us off from any future public access or pathways or anything that we want in that area?

It would not it would not and we verified with all of the utilities that have rights to that. It was a utility easement only there was no public access written into that. It was for utilities only and the utilities have indicated that they would not use it. Okay, perfect. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Seeing no other comments, I do actually want to pull one item, which is item 10, to approve a revenue budget adjustment regarding the Tate funding, just to provide some direction on that item. And so I'll pull that item and then look for a motion. Oh, I'm sorry, thank you very much for the reminder. I will now open up, does anybody else have any? I'll open up public comment on the consent calendar and we just have one speaker card for Amanda Wrights.

Amanda writes, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you. Oh, you have an attorney. Okay, I was just giving you a little hard time. I sent in emails to you. Two, four, and five, there's transparency issues. I wish that you'd reconsider and have some transparency because... They do come back to bite you. The easement on the fire, it says public, it just says it's a utility. It looks more like a, you know, a fire road to me. You know, it might not say it. But it's something that you guys should at least think about, pull it and think about using it. Because people get stuck up there above that Twin Creeks and you should have a trail down there and stuff like that. You're already in it with the property below with 12 houses. And if they get stuck up there and something, wildfire comes through there, I think that's what that easement's for. The parking, we don't have enough parking in this area, and it's getting even worse. So try to keep that in mind. I think the public deserves more attention on the parking around here. And then number eight is the attorney fees for the parking. and then looking for that, that we should have an inner, you know, instead of subbing that out to outsiders, there should be commissions, committee members, and stuff like that, and, because you already have enough publicity, and you just have to narrow it down, and it's to be the town people that are, you know, whoever's doing the sub, like DEI, or, you know, the finance and stuff like that for, that works with the attorney and maybe some legal people that do that because I think we sub out way too much and that's $30,000 just for them to narrow it down and hand pick somebody and those are outsiders and I just disagree that you're not looking out for the best interest when you pass off the responsibility of what the town should be doing. Any questions? No, thank you.

Thank you. So we have a few other speaker cards on consent that are all for item 10. Are you good to hold if we're going to pull that item to the comment to Rita and Janet? Yeah, okay. Okay, great. Then I'll turn to Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. With that, I move to approve consent items one through nine.

Second. Second. Great, we'll take a roll call vote.

Councilmember Enni?

Aye.

Councilmember Hootis?

Aye.

Councilmember Badami? Aye. Vice Mayor Risto? Aye. Mayor Moore?

Aye. passes unanimously, and we will move to item 10. I'm sorry, we will move to verbal communications. And so verbal communications is the time for members of the public to address the council on items that are not on the agenda. You can bring up a speaker card, and we also take comments via Zoom. We'll start with Bob Catt. And Bob Catt will be followed by Debbie Pink, I'm sorry, I can't read or remember your last name, Debbie.

Okay, I sent you a package, and I hope you got it. This is on the soccer field, and as you know, I've been trying to do my thing with the soccer for some time now. And I'm reporting that this is, it looks more like fraud than anything. The first page, This was for people in the public. You can find it. I had to do a public report, a public records report, which was 26343, and I got it back on 825. And this is about a week ago that I started looking at it. And I noticed that this is all the way... It's in a page on eight, if you went to your 8-3-26 meeting on parks, it's all the way in the back, it's on page 121, but it's on the soccer field and how it got shut down. And there was a couple, it's Gmax test, and we talked about this, or the town council talked about this on 5-5-26, you know, like two months, three months before. And these numbers... was that two hundred and fifty nine the g max which was outrageous uh... the the grass isn't normally between seventy five in in and one twenty five and the the the one of the ten last year's test on may thirtieth was wet one forty and then we get one sixty five in two hundred is is supposed to jump up to but this jumped up Quite a bit. It jumped up to 259, which is off the records. I mean, outrageous. And on that, it says air temperature on that day, this is in the reports, of 74 degrees. The surface of the field, though, was at 131 degrees, which is like, wow, what's going on? And two weeks later, this is during the World Cup. People want to use that field. There's 3,500 kids. And two weeks before the soccer season starts, and now over at Union High School, there's a lot more cars parked on there, and I've already complained about the cars going down and lighting and stuff like that. But two weeks later, they have another report that says 78 degrees, and a surface of 148 temperature. And the soccer field, it was supposed to be random testing, and there's a little map on the back, And all these aren't random. They're the same picture over and over. It just looks like somebody just took this report and just dittoed it off and put in their own numbers. And I'm giving you pictures and stuff like that. I'm hoping that there'll be some sort of investigation on this. Thank you.

I think people will be pissed off. Thank you. Debbie Pinkston, who will be followed by Janet Wolfe.

Hi, I've spoken about pickleball here before, and just trying to get some updates. Haven't been able to get any by calling Parks and Rec. Don't think it's a good idea to probably storm their office, although I've considered it a few times. So I'm looking for updates on when the courts are going to open. and under what circumstances they're gonna be accessible to the people who've paid to be in the Pickleball Club through the Rec Department. The Rec Department doesn't know more than I know. I've talked to them. And there's no communication, there's nothing. Rob sends his stuff out. I don't think he's got information or updates, because it would be included in his publications. And I don't know how to get information, but I know Nicole's in the room tonight, so maybe she can give us an update. That's part one. Part two. is it's left us all as really immigrants from the Lower Encanada Club. We've all had to go different places to try and play. It's been months of uncertainty and none of us know what the rules are gonna be when we get back. uh... so we need communication in advance of it opening and then we need to understand what the rules are going to be when we get there secondarily uh... i live much closer to blossom hill park i've asked before for people to give serious consideration to transitioning some of the tennis courts to pickleball at blossom hill it's super frustrating to walk by all the time. My parents live at the terraces so I walk with my mom through the park only to see people dragging carts of tennis balls because they're going to give lessons and they're going to get paid to give lessons on a public court that I can't access to play pickleball on. They're not only gonna do that, which I know is an illegal use of the courts, but they're so confident they can get the access for tennis that they're scheduling times. So today when I walked by six tennis courts, there were two people sitting on a bench, there were two people playing, and there was one person engaging in a lesson. So two of six courts were in use. I've asked and asked and asked this group and Recreation to convert courts, not one, but three courts at Blossom Hill to pickleball, where we would then start to really satisfy at a much higher level the need for space without overcrowding La Rinconada, which has been a concern of everyone's here. So, would like to know more about the rollout of the new court and would really like to put in front of you something to consider for Blossom Hill. I know there have been comments that you want to improve the neighbor situation before you do it, but I think we also need to think about the people who are playing and providing access to play something and get better use out of those six courts. They are not being utilized. Send the Rangers around to those like they come to La Rinconada. Let them see what I'm telling you. It's true. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to Janet Wolfe.

I, I'm going to talk about pickleball right now, too. I've been a member of for a few years. It's a vibrant community. And there are a lot of residents here that take advantage of it. There have been some challenges, as, you know, with just a very few residents that live on that street. And there have been a lot of concessions made around that. So after many years, it was finally decided the funds were put aside to resurface those courts. There were several deadlines that were given. The first one was delayed. I think it was supposed to be Last year or earlier, and the weather was a concern. So this one, the deadline was supposed to be that the courts were going to open early August. The last update I had after several calls to park and rec, which weren't returned, I finally got a hold of someone and they told me the end of August and today is the beginning of September. The courts are still locked. As far as we can see, the courts have been resurfaced and they've been sitting vacant for quite some time, at least a couple of weeks. And it doesn't take that long for pickleball courts to cure. I know that from experience from other communities. The. Pickleball players have been over backwards to make sure that the neighbors are not impacted. We've instituted things that we weren't required to do such as quiet paddles, quiet balls. Um, we've, we've agreed to change hours according to what the wishes were from the town. And we're still waiting for our courts to be open. I understand that Blossom Hill was tabled because all of the money that was allocated to this project had to go to Rinconada. There was no way to split it up. So now they are the only courts in Los Gatos that are public courts that are available to the residents of Los Gatos. And I don't think it's unreasonable for many, many people that play pickleball to want those to be open and equitable for us and to consider the numbers of people that utilize those courts as opposed to maybe one squeaky wheel that's not happy about us being there. In terms of quiet paddles and quiet balls, I just want to go on record as saying that I'd love you to consider that because we did put up soundproof barriers. Well, you put up soundproof barriers. We appreciate the fact that the courts have been redone. That should solve the problem. So by instituting special equipment, you're again putting us in a situation where there are residents that want to play that won't play because they won't have the money or the means or the desire to purchase more equipment. So I just wanted to, like Deb, get some information, find out when the courts are opening, and hopefully we can all be respectful of each other in the neighborhood and just enjoy something. Thank you.

Thank you. I am not, that was our last speaker card in the room and I'm not seeing any hands raised on Zoom. Is there, okay.

There are two hands raised on Zoom.

Perfect. Then we will go to Austin and then Leanne.

Good evening. What follows is information provided for your own independent verification. October 9th, 2023, 922 a.m. in Burley at LosGatosCA.gov, searched flock. The license plate they were looking for started with the letters PG, ended with the number 622. The reason given was to locate suspect or suspects of criminal investigation or arrest warrant. The case number starts with 23- and ends with 88. June 27th, 2023, 7.25 a.m. R. Frizzell at losgatoca.gov. Search for a license plate with wildcard in the first position, ending with 265. That case number starts with 23- and ends with 49. This is all information the town normally sensitive, or this is all information the town normally deems sensitive enough to redact in its own network audits released to the public. But I'm able to access this information because a contractor for the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, otherwise known as NICRC, pushed a code repository to their personal account on GitHub for the whole world to see. In that same time, or in that same unredacted network audit for thousands of other searches, including by accounts ending with ice.dhs.gov and fbi.gov, implying that the town search records of AOPR data are commingled with those associated with federal agencies, raising serious concerns about the compliance under SB 34 and SB 54, known as the California Values Act. Additionally, the disclosed repository describes a system for extracting data from FLoC API and storing it in a database controlled by NCCRC. The town promises 30-day retention, documented access, regular audits, and no immigration enforcement use. The absence of evidence in the town's FLoC audit is not evidence that no access occurred when a separate database and audit boundary existed outside the town's visibility. I asked the council to take this breach seriously, launch an investigation, and report back to the public. I sent you all a letter that unfortunately could not be included in tonight's agenda packet due to policies. But if you haven't already, I urge you to read the whole thing and take action. If you have any questions, you know where to find me. Thanks.

Thank you. We will go to Leanne.

Good evening, Mayor Moore, Vice Mayor Risto and Council Members Barame, Rene and Hudes. I also want to bring attention to the Creekside artificial field, which is currently closed because it's failing hardness safety standards. Hardness is just one issue with artificial turf, but it's the issue needing dealt with right now. According to ASTM recommendations, Creekside should have been tested for hardness, or Gmax tested, more often than annually, given that it's a high use. But Creekside, well expired at 14 years old, has only ever been tested six times in total and it failed miserably three of those times, reaching over 200 on almost all zones. According to the American Standards for Testing and Materials, a value greater than 200 Gmax qualifies for the expectation that life-threatening head injuries may occur. From what I can establish, almost $10,000 was paid to AstroTurf on July 3rd for maintenance, and yet the field failed two subsequent hardness tests on July 8th and July 27th. I'm concerned that the field is beyond remediation and that pressure to reopen the field may put kids' safety at risk and open the town to liability in the event of an injury. If a temporary fix is found, like adding tons more used tyre crumb rubber, I urge the town to, firstly, Consider the extra contamination that would potentially be added to the environment and Los Gatos Creek and the users since the field's carpet is practically bald and unlikely to contain any extra used tyre crumb rubber. Secondly, to ensure that the field is tested regularly enough, weekly or even daily, to ensure the safety of users and by extension the town's purse and reputation. The town could buy their own equipment to do this rather than shelling out $1,000 a pop to an external company. Ultimately, I'd love for you to consider a natural turf replacement to avoid myriad future issues like hardness which has occurred with Creekside now. Thank you.

Thank you. And we have 1 more speaker card in the room, which is Joe ends.

That's some things about the home effect. I'm not sure I got a lot of black for that. Whatever. I mean, I was trying to speak my truth about what I see. And what I see with the meth is a large correlation between violence and these people. Because they've all been violent towards me. I'm having the best time of my life, but... I don't know. I just had to say that. And so I don't care what anybody says out there about me getting up here and saying, you know, it's probably not a good thing that those people are doing that. So I guess that's it. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. And that concludes verbal communications. And we will now move on to item 11. Um, which is considered recommendation, uh, by the planning commission, but for approval by the planning commission on proposed changes and additions to the town's objective design standards. And I will turn to planning staff to take us through the staff report.

Thank you and good evening council members. For your consideration, tonight staff is presenting proposed changes and additions to the town's objective design standards for multifamily and mixed use projects, or ODS. The town's existing ODS were adopted by the council in November of 22 and have since been used in the review of numerous applications. In August of 24, the council directed staff to issue an RFP to develop additional standards addressing high quality building design, architectural style, height transitions, and considerations for small multi-family housing projects. The town subsequently selected Lisa Wise Consulting to assist with this effort, and staff and the consultant team have worked through project initiation, six consultant-led focus groups, a community open house, and a joint town council and planning commission study session. These efforts, along with additional community input, culminated in the draft ODS before you this evening. The draft ODS continues to be organized into two sections, site standards in section A and building standards in section B. Changes and additions have been made throughout the document in response to council direction and community feedback. On June 24th, 2026, the planning commission considered the draft ODS and forwarded a recommendation of approval to the council. The commission's recommendation included 18 suggested edits to the draft. In response, staff prepared an errata document identifying each of the 18 suggested edits, providing staff's comment on each and detailing the corresponding revisions made to the draft ODS. Based on this work, staff recommended the council accept the planning commission's recommendation and adopt the resolution approving the proposed changes and additions to the town's ODS. And with that, I'll turn the presentation over to our consultant team who will walk you through the proposed changes in more detail.

Thank you for that introduction, Sean. Can everyone hear me okay?

I think we're going to need to turn up your volume just a little bit, if possible. Or you might have to get a little bit closer to your mic or computer, but you can go ahead. We can hear you.

Okay, I turned up my volume. I hope that's a little bit better.

We hear you loud and clear.

Great. Wonderful. Well, thank you for that introduction, Sean. My name is Monica Sidlick. I'm a senior associate at Lisa Wise Consulting. And I'm really glad to be before you tonight to present the draft updated objective design standards for adoption. So I'll do a quick introduction of our team, and then I'll just dive into the standards. Okay, let's move on to the next slide. Okay, great. And so as Sean mentioned, our consulting team has been working closely with the staff over the last about year and a half, and I'll go through in a little bit more detail everything we've done in that time. So again, I'm Monica, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Cal and Po tonight. Also on the team as a sub-consultant, but not here tonight, was Urban Planning Partners, another small consulting firm. So just briefly, we're from LWC, land use planning and economics firm. We do design standards and zoning and all things planning all over the country, mostly in California. And we've really been glad to have this opportunity to do this work with the City of Los Gatos. Okay, let's move on to the next. Okay, so as you all know, this project is an update to a set of objective design standards that the Town adopted in early 2023. Standards for multifamily and mixed-use residential development in response to Council and community and staff feedback. The project is generally speaking, it's to implement the town's general plan goals and to ensure compliance with SB 330, which was adopted in 2020. And it's really the occasion for these objective design standards for residential development. I'll say a few more words about SB 330 on the next slide. But generally speaking, that's true of all ODS projects all over, but locally here, In Los Gatos, the focus of this particular project is to ensure that the project reflects high quality building design and addresses the adjacencies where there are sensitive height transitions. that the standards acknowledge the special Los Gatos character and architectural details that make up that character, and to also make sure that the standards apply to residential buildings of all scales, including small and midsize and, of course, large-scale multifamily buildings. Okay, on the next slide, I know that you all know about SB 330 and the and that the community knows sort of what this means for review and approval of residential projects. But just as a quick recap, SB 330 requires objective standards that involve no personal or subjective judgment and are uniformly verifiable that are not a matter of discretion, right? in order to support a ministerial process for residential projects that is required by state law. That doesn't mean that every project must go through the ministerial project. There's always the option to go through a discretionary process, but that pathway must be there. So we wanna make sure that it is robust enough and that there are standards to meet the council's and the community's goals for residential development. Okay, next I'll go through a little bit about the timeline of our project. As I mentioned, we kicked it off about a year and a half ago or so. Then we We started by just documenting everything that we saw, looking at the existing standards, looking at the opportunity sites, at the housing element, at the general plan, and just absorbing all of this material. We looked at the North 40 just to see what its design standards were. We looked at the record of community input. And we looked at a handful of projects, recent and under development projects, to see what was going on, to see what the site constraints were, the density, and what that all meant for how the design came together. Next, we had a series of focus groups with residents, architects, developers, and we talked about everything that was on the focus group members' minds. We talked about the existing standards. We talked about what makes Los Gatos, Los Gatos and what the community members were looking for in new standards. We took all of that material together and we developed a memo, a recommendations memo where we spelled out what we intended to do for the standards. So on the next slide, we submitted that recommendations memo and then With those recommendations, we wanted to present them to the community and get some feedback before we moved forward and filled out those recommendations. So in December, we developed a series of boards and held a community open house. And we got just a whole lot of great feedback. We dug into some details. We talked about broadly standards, design and Los Gatos and what people specific elements that people like or dislike about existing buildings and what they're concerned about going forward. So generally speaking, the bullets on this slide were the main focus of of discussion among the community members. And people just got out the markers and just marked everything up on all of the boards, which was a ton of great feedback. Next, we came before you all and the Planning Commission at a study session and we talked about what we heard and we gathered feedback. And then with all of that, we developed an administrative draft of the standards on the next slide. And that was reviewed by staff, a lot of back and forth with the whole team. And then we released the public draft in early June. We brought that to the planning commission in late June. We got a lot of specific great feedback on that draft. We revised the draft and that's what we have before you tonight. So we'll talk just a little bit about the source of all of the updates. When I say the updates, I mean the changes that we're recommending from the January 2023 original objective design standards that you all adopted. So we started, even before we were involved, we looked at notes from a workshop on community design in 2020. And we read about concerns at that time, which are listed here, step backs, materials, balanced facades. We dove into the records from a community meeting on ODS in 2022. And then we read carefully the town council meeting notes from 2024 that really determined that this project was needed. On the next slide, Now, when we began working with the staff and community, we looked at the list of changes that the staff requested. Again, we held the focus groups and the open house. And these are the bullets here, what really came out of it, if we were to say in a nutshell what came out of each of these. And then the study session in March. You may recall we presented some options. We threw around some ideas. We got a lot of great feedback that fed into the administrative draft. And next, then on the next slide, we went to Planning Commission in June. And then the feedback from June was very, very focused, very specific. We worked through those. And then you'll see, starting in the next slide, I'll just walk you through the standards. Okay, this is perhaps you'll recall the, essentially the outline, the table of contents of the existing ODS. So in a nutshell, a handful of the sections just see very minor edits. And then the ones in red have a little bit more to them. And then we added a few new sections, tacked them on at the end. I believe in your packet, there's a track changes version that shows the sum of the changes between the adopted ODS and what we have tonight. Okay, so we'll go through them. We'll go through a handful of slides that summarize the changes. Okay, so on the next slide, This topic of building massing and options, this really, we needed a fresh look at this topic and we needed graphics that more closely reflect the forms and the sites that we see in Los Gatos. So it was important to us that the options would work for the range of densities that the multifamily and mixed use zones support. So you'll recall we discussed this in March. We arrived at the three options that you see on the right side of the slide. And then we also included a requirement that attached townhomes appear as separate volumes through a change in plane. So any multifamily or mixed use building, 40% of the upper stories should be stepped back or a ground level or podium level community recreation space must be carved into the building and enclosed by three walls, or the building can be 65 feet wide. And the three, as you'll recall from that discussion, the three options are commensurate in terms of how onerous they are on the developer. That was the goal for these. Okay, the next slide will talk about adjacency to single-family districts, a particular concern among community members at the open house. So we looked at the sensitive interior side and rear adjacencies, and then after some discussion, recommended a reduced height, 40 feet from a property line abutting a residential district. And then also a five foot step back for elevated outdoor open space abutting the residential district. And the next slide. We looked closely at ways of ensuring that buildings exhibit some architectural articulation and that it reflects the character that we've heard described by the community. Again, like the building massing, we wanted the options to be sort of commensurate in terms of contributing to the neighborhood and also the burden on the applicants. So we started with the concepts that are in your existing ODS, and then we worked from there to refine them and enhance that section to ensure that the options would apply to the scale of development that we're looking at. And we have five options as shown on this slide here. The next slide, a bit more about architectural articulation. We added standards for what we call 360 degree design so that all building elevations are treated the same. And that when a building elevation changes from one material to another, it's done in a careful way that reflects high quality design. You can see what we mean on the upper right here. And we introduced limits on blank walls, also an effort to require high-quality design and to enhance walkability and pedestrian comfort along mixed-use districts and rights-of-way. The next slide, we looked specifically at entrances. We had a lot of great content already in the ODS. We just give it a closer look. We enhanced and refined the standards essentially ensuring that building access is visible and comfortable and enhances the streetscape. A little bit more on high-quality design on the next slide. We know that windows were also brought up frequently by community members. There is a real desire to ensure that windows contribute to the design and the appeal of the building and that they're applied to a building in a way that's with some integrity across the whole building. contribute to the design in a meaningful way. So we looked at window design. We looked at the palette of building materials, how much of each material to make sure that there's a good balance. And we looked at durability and fire resistance as well. And we also included standards for options for roof design. The aim is to make sure that roof design contributes to depth and variation and visual interest at the top of the building. The next slide. There's also... a fair amount of content in the standards on site design and open space. So we heard from the community about what's working, what's missing. We updated the standards to address some specific concerns about design and the usability of required open space. We introduced a new requirement for community open space and its design and looked at what are appropriate dimensions thinking about feasibility and usability of space. And we also introduced a requirement that upper story step backs, where there is an upper story step back, that it be improved as usable space. So it doesn't end up as leftover space. And then the next slide is about a building placement on a site. So we started with a standard that's in your current standards, but refined it from there. We created models that reflect actual site conditions and other development standards that apply to the building in question. And then we refined and illustrated the standard. The goal is pedestrian comfort. We want to encourage walkability and make it an attractive and high-quality public realm. And that's our brief summary of the standards that are before you in your packet. No, it's not. We've got one more slide about vehicle and bicycle parking and access. So we updated these sort of updated best practice, current best practices. And then we looked at parking structures and we added some best practices for how visible should parking structures be and what do we want in terms of for the design of parking structures. So we looked at openings and screening and generally how much of it can you see and to what extent must a parking and above ground parking structure be wrapped with habitable uses. And that is the standard, the summary of the standards that are in your packet. And I'll turn the presentation back over to Sean and look forward to your comments.

Thank you, Monica. So that completes staff's presentation. We're obviously here to support your discussion tonight and answer any questions.

Thank you very much. Do folks have initial questions? Okay, seeing none, we will, I don't think we have any speaker cards for this item. Oh, Council Member Hudis, thank you.

Yeah, thank you. In terms of the community outreach, about how many unique people participated in the workshops and sessions, not including the planning commission and council meeting?

Thank you for that question. I don't have those numbers at the ready, but I can try to look them up here.

Okay. Do we have a sense about whether it was... Really good participation or.

Yeah, I recall the focus groups, which were conducted via zoom. We actually had to. create more focus groups because we had such a strong response. It was a little bit more than expected. And the open house that we had at the rec center was pretty well attended for a cold, rainy December night. But we may not have had giant numbers there, but we had a lot of great participation at that meeting and received great feedback there.

Okay, thank you. I don't need anything further on that. Thank you.

Okay, I'm sure we'll all have questions and comments, but we'll go to public comment first. We do have one card in the room from Leif ago, and then we'll turn to our speakers on Zoom.

Thank you. Good evening. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this issue. As a long-term resident, the reason I moved here is because of the character of the town, the sense of welcoming, and at the same time, it was very clear that the history has been to preserve the character of the town over generations. I'd like to see that continue. And with that in mind, my concern is what happens with the legislation coming out of sacramento builders remedy and can that override these objective design standards in town that's a concern and is there a way to shield and protect these objective designs which were came about because of these workshops and the community input on what people wanted to do to try to preserve that sense of what Los Gatos is as opposed to some parts of San Jose that we see are facing some incredible changes and that do not fit what the warmth and character of Los Gatos is. So with that, what consideration is there about the builder's remedy challenges and the litigation that could come about from that? THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. WE'LL TURN TO GUS HUGH.

Yeah, I'd like to echo that sentiment. This is a town, again, and these are three stories, and the only thing I saw that looked good was the parking structure, because we don't have enough parking. Make a five-story or a 10-story, put it right in the middle of downtown, and that way people can walk around and keep the building smaller. The street sizes are already getting smaller, and I don't think that's covered in this stuff. but it just looks like you're turning it into a city and it's not a city, it's a town and you're losing the charm. So that's, I think anybody that's just come up here from, that lives in the area would rather see it smaller and not as boxy, thanks.

Thank you. And we'll now turn to Zoom, first with Dashiell Leeds and then Ronnie.

Hello, my name is Dasha Leeds. I'm the conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club Loma Prieta chapter. I'm here to speak in support of the recommendations presented by the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance regarding some additional proposals to protect residents from nuisance lighting from unnecessary outdoor lighting. So the letter recommended adding some language, recommending that light sources have a correlated color temperature of 2700 Kelvin or lower. I'll focus my comments on that one. Color temperature is really important when it comes to the impacts of artificial light at night. Blue light, so light in excess of 3000 Kelvin and beyond, and even 2700 Kelvin beyond that, higher than that, really triggers the retinal ganglion cells in our eyes, which leads to circadian rhythm disruption and can be correlated with all sorts of negative health impacts and is just a nuisance at night. So having that lower color temperature of 2700 Kelvin, it's a really pleasant orange, still highly visible for folks. It's just a really effective standard that's been adopted in places like Palo Alto and others. It's super, super important to regulate color temperature, and I think it's a really easy, straightforward addition. I also wanted to support the suggested provision to have automated timers on non-essential outdoor lighting to be extinguished by 11 p.m. or whenever the illuminated area is no longer in use. Just another straightforward addition. inclusion there, which just ensures that, you know, when people are outside and using lighting, that it's available for them, but that, you know, when they go inside, and they're no longer using the lighting anymore, past 11pm, those systems can just automatically shut it off, people don't have to remember, they don't accidentally leave their lights on and then disturb their friends and neighbors, or, you know, have light proceeding to shine into nearby habitat as well. Speaking of which, I actually really appreciate that the standards include prohibitions against trespassing your light into other properties. The existing language says that light should not shine directly on lands of adjacent residential zoned properties. We just recommend removing the term residential zone so that light should not be shining directly on lands of any adjacent properties. just so it doesn't, you know, shine into wildlife habitat or other properties that aren't specifically residential zoned where lighting could still have a negative impact. So thanks again. Really appreciate you considering this and we support the letter from the Bird Alliance. Thanks for your time.

Thank you. We'll turn to Ronnie. Ronnie, you can unmute. There we go. Yep.

Good evening, Mayor Moore and City Council. My name is Ronnie Fisher, and I'm the chair of the Environmental Action Committee for the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance. I will just second what everything that Dash just said. Thank you so much for discussing this tonight, and... I live in Sunnyvale. I wish I lived in a place that had the warmth and village feel that you have. So I'm grateful to you for discussing lighting and urge you to heed the advice in the letter from Bird Alliance today. Thank you for your leadership.

Thank you. All right, that closes our public comment, and I'll turn back to the council for questions and comment. I have a few questions to get us started while we're getting warm. First, maybe this is more of an attorney question, but I saw the musts were changed to shalls. What is the difference between a must and a shall?

REALLY THEY MEAN THE SAME THING AND THEY BOTH MEAN THAT IT'S AN OBLIGATION. IT'S NOT A RECOMMENDATION. IT'S A REQUIREMENT.

OKAY. AND SO WHAT WAS THAT WAS JUST DONE?

THAT WAS AS I RECALL A SUGGESTION BY THE PLANNING COMMISSION. OKAY. THANK YOU. TO MAKE IT CONSISTENT.

OK, and then I want to ask about the Planning Commission changes that weren't implemented. Item 17 makes a lot of sense that we can't require what's behind curtains or behind windows to be anything in particular. Item 12, I was a little bit curious about. You know, about the – I really like the idea of providing spaces for bus stops where there's big blank, you know – Spots of wall, I read the response saying that that's public works. I think, you know, it's would it be wrong to include it? I know that that is more of a public works component, but I think when somebody is reading this, I think it'd be nice to be able to say in general bus stops. Should be prioritized in along long blank walls, you know, some something more articulate than that, but I'm just curious sort of in a public works to planning. What's the rationale there?

Yeah, thank you. I think the challenge with the standard or the suggestion is. That. The town, Public Works has some say in the bus stop placement and the director is here today and she can opine on that. But I think a lot of it comes up to VTA and it's out of our control. So an applicant could come in and make a space for a bus stop and then it would not be used because VTA chose not to do that or discontinue the line or change it near side to far side.

Okay, yeah, I hear that. I guess I'm thinking of an example. This is obviously a little bit different, but I was thinking of the new Whole Foods where it was clearly the developer clearly put in space for a bus stop, and then a bus stop was put in. And so that's the sort of circumstance I'm thinking of.

And in that example, it's a great example, that was coordinated with VTA and the town had the leverage because that wasn't a builder's remedy or a density bonus project to work with the developer and have them put that in. We may not have that ability in most of the projects that these standards apply to.

Okay. Okay. Yes, please, Vice Mayor Aristo.

Okay, first of all I want to thank the consultant, the staff and the residents and the developers and everybody who participated in this. I read the notes from the public outreach and I liked the way the the comments were grouped not only by category, but the input from the architect, then the input from the developers, and the input from the residents. It really helped me understand where people were coming from and how this all came together. There was a question brought up by a member of the public, and so I just want to clarify that when we adopt updated objective standards, My understanding is they will apply to any new SB 330 projects that come in because they will vest to what's in place. And any existing projects are vested to the previous version of this, is that correct? That's correct. Okay, and then assuming we get an application that came in already, Would staff be encouraging any applicants to at least take a look at the updated standards? I know that we don't have any legal standing with it, but.

Yeah, I think the legal standing is tricky there. We could always mention that they've been updated and if they'd like to read them and implement them, that would be great. But legally, you know, they're vested to the old standards.

Okay, so we're looking at things that come in in the future. Yes. Which we know there will be more of, so that's helpful. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and I had similar questions about each of the adoption. When you said the staff recommendation is to adopt the Planning Commission's recommendation, that is in addition to they made a variety of recommendations that staff did and did not take, and so we're looking at that, right? Yeah.

That's correct. So we wanted to make sure it was very clear. So the consultant put together the errata document to track what was implemented in, I believe it's attachment one with the resolution, and what wasn't with the explanation of why.

Right. OK. Super helpful. And then one more question. And it did come up in our twin oaks discussion and so I didn't hear anything at the planning commission discussing outdoor lighting in terms of temperature or timers. So, um, when we get into more discussion, I'll want to explore that more.

Thank you turn to council member.

Thank you. Um, just going back through my notes, going back to 20. 22 and then 2024, one of the things that we talked about was architectural style, that our ODS must evaluate the architecture within the immediate neighborhood to determine the architectural styles that are consistent and appropriate for the neighborhood. I don't see what in this document much about architectural style, and I wondered What the thinking was on that. I wondered if this document's been reviewed by our town architect, Larry Cannon, who's very familiar with architectural styles in town.

Thank you for that question. So I can address the Mr. Cannon did not review this document. Regarding the architectural styles, I can start and Monica from LWC may be able to jump in. Architectural styles, regulating them objectively is very difficult and looking for a consistent architectural style within a neighborhood to make sure that a project is consistent with that style is very difficult, and we did have many discussions about that internally. The document attempts to address that by making sure that the architectural style being proposed is of high quality and consistent within itself, and I'm not sure if Monica has anything beyond that to add.

Yeah. Thank you, Sean. Um, so that's true. We did give it a whole lot of thought, um, and discussion. And at one point in thinking about, okay, when we developed the, the outline and the recommendations, we moved from architectural character and details to, or I'm sorry, architectural style to character and details. Uh, we did talk specifically about style with, um, with focus group members. And we found, uh, uh, so we talked a lot about style and, and style with capital S. What are the styles that you see in Los Gatos? What, what are, what are, um, the styles that, that, um, that are sort of native to LISC-A that you see in original buildings and what are the styles that you sort of identify with. We also, we brought up sort of pallets of styles or pallets of features that are attributed to a particular style at the workshop or the open house in December. And after discussing it with the focus group members and trying it out with the at the open house, we determined that the best route would be to talk about character and details and building integrity, but to stay away from particular styles. Because what we understood is that there is a range. There are a range of styles. It would not be wise to point out particular styles that are representative, demonstrative of the character of Los Gatos. And that's how the discussion evolved over the course of the project.

Yeah, thank you. It's obvious that's where we got to. I don't think that's where at least I started from in my work on this, that there are ways to identify architectural styles. We use references like this one and like this one all the time when we're evaluating various projects. And that's why I had asked about Mr. Cannon, who's quite adept at putting a label onto a building style, whether it's Mission, Spanish Revival, Craftsman, Federal, etc. And there are you know, in these kinds of books, certain kinds of features that are associated with that style. Not that, you know, my opinion is that we don't necessarily want to do this across, you know, the whole town. But rather when we're looking at neighborhood compatibility, that was the original thought was that we needed to look at Uh, style with regard that I may be the only 1 on the council that that thinks about that, but I believe it reflects, um. What residents have said when they talk about character and I. I am looking in the standards to see what would preserve that character. And, um, I'm, I'm frankly out getting into neighborhood compatibility on architectural sites. Uh. Uh, styles, I, I find it difficult to get to that point. So, um, I'm just wondering, you know, it sounds like the evolution was. It was difficult to do, um, and that's why I also asked whether Mr cannon was consulted on this work.

Council member,

Thank you, Mayor. Along with that, it sounds like it was the consultant's decision and maybe staff to kind of steer away from architectural style. But during the focus groups that were held, did architectural style come up as a concern with any of the residents? We spent two years on this.

Yeah, I mean, that was part of the discussion and if you look on page, it starts on page 341 of your packet, but it's the it's a document that really points to. The items specific in the draft that address the council's direction is sort of a roadmap that we put together for the planning commission. And Monica has a bit better handle on the focus groups than I do because the staff wasn't involved with the focus groups. We wanted to keep that independent of staff so folks could feel like they could speak freely. So I wasn't there for the focus groups. I was there for the community open house and it really got down into the architectural details and less about style. So it was ensuring that roofs had brackets or windows close to corners either wrapped the corner of a building or had a space in between that was adequate to make sure the proportions were correct. I don't recall in my discussions during the community open house folks saying that all these projects should steer away from a particular style. It was more about the details and really specific things that folks didn't want to see like flush mount windows and it boiled down to that.

Yeah, I can add to that, just if I may, thinking about the focus groups. We did make an attempt to tackle style and we heard a lot about single family homes and the style of homes of the participants and their neighbors and their neighborhood. But when steering the discussion to applying those styles with which they're familiar to larger buildings, we found that the discussion became less constructive and helpful. And what happened is what Sean described. We started talking about details that you see on buildings and maybe the fact that there has to be a base to the building and a top with character that have some relationship to each other. But the discussion of style didn't materialize in the discussion of the densities, the scale of building that we're anticipating that the housing element describes.

Thank you.

To say that it can't be done, but that's where we are now.

Thank you. I had a couple other questions. The first one was on pedestrian access. I just wanted to hear if there was anything, I mean, this seems pretty good to me, but I think this is an important aspect of what we're, you know, the vision, that I have for what we're trying to achieve is that these are not just monolithic buildings, but buildings that sort of fit into the community and are able to be integrated from existing neighborhoods. And so I'm curious from staff's perspective if A1, there's only the two bullet points there, I think seem good to me, but wanted to see if there was anything that didn't make it in that was considered in pedestrian access or anything else that we think could be done on that.

Again, I can start. I'm not sure that we made significant changes to a 1. these were existing standards that came out of the 2022 effort and we changed the shell to a must. I think this 1 through our experience is working pretty well and achieving the results where. developers don't wave out of them, we're getting pathways through, we're getting walkways that connect to sidewalks and you're not contained within and having to walk out a driveway for cars. So I think there's success here and there wasn't much that came out of our effort that would inform additional standards.

Okay, that's good to hear. And so, you know, to use an example that we're familiar with, one thing that I, would a, something like a genuine automotive project, they didn't waive, they adhered to these standards?

Yes. Have to remember back. It's been a while, but I don't know if they had any specific waivers to any little tiny pieces here, but I don't recall them having pedestrian site access waivers on their project.

Okay, that's that's helpful. Um, and then going to 11, 2, which is on elevated open space. I'm just curious what we're sort of practically thinking. Is this. This is talking about like a rooftop gazebo sort of, and we're calling it rooftop open space. I guess, can you define that a little bit better and give an example of what that is? Because it's obviously distinct from open space.

Yeah, I think Monica's presentation had a section drawing. It wasn't talking about the open space, but it's a good way to think about it. It was the... Examining the context between single-story residential right next door and we were asking for this larger setback What you're seeing on that larger setback for the second or above the second story could be usable rooftop open space So you could have a rooftop deck up there Obviously, there's some current concerns with that with noise and privacy. So we've not only said that from a massing perspective you should push the the third and above stories back, but if you're gonna use that area as rooftop open space, then you need to at least have some sort of barrier five feet from the edge of the building to help create some privacy. I think some of these projects, to meet the densities, they have to eat up a lot of ground. And there's opportunities through these design standards and just through the natural design that developers are bringing forward to put rooftop and capitalize on those spaces that we've seen in several projects. They haven't been built and haven't been approved quite yet, but they are using little nooks and crannies on the building for open space that's accessible to the residents.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um, okay. And then I'll ask one more question, then turn to council member Huda. So, um, I actually, I'm going to, I want to get into 7.2, but maybe because there's more questions on that. Maybe I'll let council member Huda's go and then ask about 7.2.

Okay, thanks. I had two areas. Just coming back to this about architectural style. Is there anything in the ODS that talks about neighborhood style? I'm looking at page 19 of this deck, which has a different style. architectural styles, I think. Is there anything that talks about, so anything that complies with any of the architectural articulation or design, that type of thing, could go anywhere? Is that correct? Or is there any consideration of what is by any sense of place?

Matthew, I think we lost you at the end there. You want to try that again and maybe try to turn off your camera for us to – you're breaking up just a little bit.

Sure. So my question was I was looking at slide 19. That seemed to have different types of – Slide 19. Slide 19. Okay. That seemed – different types of articulation, which you could somewhat translate into some different styles. Any building go anywhere. In other words, is there any neighborhood compatibility as we have in our residential design guidelines that Uh, the, uh, the, uh, a particular resident should be compatible with. The 225, um, concept, uh. Do we have anything that or could any. Needs these standards go anywhere?

The town manager, I just got a notification that any council member that is tele. Telephoning into the meeting needs to be projected on the screen and my apologies bad suggestion.

And we, we caught your question council member, so I'll turn to planning. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. So, thank you. And I appreciate you repeating the question. Trying to objectify a concept and I'll just use the 225 would be again challenging because coming up with standards that would regulate objectively architectural, an architectural style that would be consistent with its surrounding neighborhood, whether it's defined as the 225 or something different. We looked kind of on a higher level but couldn't get there. I think the way that we really went about it when we look at that kind of roadmap document it was through the detailing again through building massing and scales because one of the biggest challenges that we see is these taller buildings next to single family and they're just so out of context and you know roof designing back to the details i don't know i'm not sure how we could do something like the 225 in an objective standards document

Okay. Well, I may do some research and send that in. It's not going to make this review. I do think that, you know, again, in architectural styles, there are examples of buildings that are multi-family buildings. That's coming in focus, is it? And these are references that we use all the time. And other communities have talked about having in one particular neighborhood Spanish mission style and not permitting an international style or a modern style in a certain neighborhood. So I understand some of this might be challenging, but I do think that that was 1 of the things that we set out to do, and I was hoping we would get further with that. I had 1 other area that I'd like to explore mayor. If you if this is a good time, go ahead. And that is the adjacency to single family districts. I think I had sent some examples in about that and Palo Alto in particular. Um, has a 50 foot, uh. Distance, but from the property line, we're only recommending a 40 foot distance. Is there a reason for the 40 foot?

I don't recall the discussion specifically Monica. I'm not sure if you recall why we landed on 40 feet.

I'm sorry.

For the upper story setback when it's adjacent to a residential district, we're requiring a 40-foot setback, but other communities have used 50. I just don't recall offhand why we landed on 40.

And through the mayor. I mean, should the council wish to change that number to 50? You know, that's a modification that we can make.

Okay, thank you. Okay, yeah, Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. I've read a lot of the comments that came in from the public meetings from residents, a lot of whom expressed a desire that they liked a variety of styles, from the architects who are not wanting too many restrictions on what can be done because that would limit their creativity and all of a sudden you'd end up with all the new buildings looking the same. I think part of working on these objective standards, I mean, they do have to be objective. They do have to literally be tape measure standards that anybody can understand. I think the work on different features, having so many feet of overhang on an eave, having so many maximum feet before you have to break up the plane, having windows recessed, those things will achieve I think, improved architecture over some of the buildings that we have seen under the builder's remedy that may or may not come forward that people are objecting to. So I think some of this is what we're working toward and the other is looking at what people are not finding to fit in. I've said this probably every time we talk about objective standards, but We really, we have a lot of different styles in our community and I think trying to create a large mixed use or you know, multi-family building and base it on the single-family styles can get tricky. You know, do you really want a seven-story Victorian or something? We're not going to build the Hotel Del Coronado. And what I think about is it's a little easier if you're in Santa Barbara because it's all mission. So, you know, you can make it really easy. Red roof, white walls, you know, it's very uniform. I think about if we decided that you could only do certain styles in certain areas, then if three new buildings went up, they would all be the same style, and I would rather see them be high quality and relate to each other but have some variety. I mean, I live right downtown in a historic district, and on my street there's probably eight different architectural styles. I wouldn't want to live on there where I had to use my garage door opener to figure out which house I lived in. If we decided that you could only have a certain architectural style, we would not have the library. We would not have the Netflix buildings. And I think those are actually quite beautiful. And the juxtaposition, if they're in scale, they work really well. So I actually like the way this has gone. And I think it was pointed out by some of the architects that we no longer have the point system. like do this, do that, and people would pick the easiest items so every new building had all the same types of features on there. These options for architectural articulation are really great. I think, you know, I'm hoping that as new buildings come forward the people designing the buildings will have a fresh look at how they can combine some of those. So I'm actually really happy with where this landed because it has to be very very objective. What I wanted to get to is the lighting because we talked about that when we were doing the general plan update and we talked about in the future wanting to look at dark skies and bird friendly windows and I don't know that we can do the windows but i think it is really important to look at what the outside lighting would be and if we can set that's a clear objective standard you know less than or equal to 2700 kelvin on the lighting um timers for non-essential lighting going off at 11. i do have to ask what would be considered non-essential or what would be considered essential i'm assuming like pedestrian lighting and

Yeah, I think looking at that particular suggestion by the Bird Alliance, I actually had written down that non-essential is a problematic term. But later on in their suggestion, they say they carve out things that are required for, I don't have it in front of me, but for building safety or to meet the building code that's probably something that would line up you know if the council wanted to go that direction we're not necessarily going to take the language that's in there the council could craft language in real time or just give staff direction to make sure that we're hitting the purpose uh and writing something that we can apply

Okay, I mean, for me, given that they talk about lighting required by the California building code or fire code for safety emergency access is exempt, that is exempt from the timer. That's not exempt from the color range, right?

Yeah, and again, we could craft it so that the timer and the temperature, so that we're not violating building code. I'm not familiar enough with that.

Okay, I mean, I really like this. I would really like to see this added. Okay.

Yeah, I'll just jump in and then I'll turn to Council Member Rennie. I'm really just concurring with everything that the Vice Mayor just said. I all agree with, you know, on our architectural articulation. I remember when we originally talked about, we had sort of, I remember we had six different items when we, you know, back in 2022 or 2023 when we were first, updating this in response to SB 330 and state housing law changes, the architecture was a big sticking point. It was going to be really hard to try to, you know, mandate certain types of architecture or, you know, certain kinds of looks. And I had the same fear that we're going to end up with all Spanish style or all craftsman style homes. And, you know, that... isn't the idea either. I'm really impressed with what we got to on this. I think this is a good, I think the Examples of architectural articulation that you need to pick two of the following I think is a really good way to make sure that the buildings that are coming forward look interesting and are, you know, thoughtfully designed and have some level of character to them. I think the big sticking point for me on some of the, you know, the buildings that people are unhappy about is that they are monoliths. They're just big walls with no architectural articulation of any kind. So I think this is a good approach. Going to 7.2, I'll concur with Vice Mayor Stowe that I really like the Bird Alliances language. I think this is a really good thing to do. I'm also very conceptually supportive of introducing dark skies and bird-friendly design into all of our building, but I think this is a good place to start here. And so unless staff has any particular issues with the language proposed, I believe this is taken from San Mateo County's recently updated objective design standards. And so I think this would, you know, Yeah, I guess unless staff has particular issues with the language, I would be supportive of moving this forward.

And if I can ask a clarifying question on it, on an attachment nine, are you speaking about the proposed section 7.2 and there are several underlined additions that the alliance is suggesting? Yeah, I think, um, as far as staff housing, having an issue, I've already voiced concern about the non-essential language. That's something that we can work around. Um, similarly, There's the, I'm trying to find it. There's a statement about minimum necessary to support the activity. I think we would struggle to find a way to capture that. We could certainly endeavor to try and either bring something back or just put something out there that tries to meet the objective.

Okay, okay, that's helpful. And I'm excited to go to Councilmember Rainey next. But that's fine with me that We proceed with approximately this language with modifications where there is confusion among staff. I'll go to Council Member Rennie, then Council Member Badami, then Vice Mayor Risto.

Okay, thank you, Mayor. I'm trying to understand some of the items on slide number 23. Maybe starting with, you know, we've got a bullet that says 40% of upper story setbacks must be open space and step back for neighbors' privacy. That makes sense when we have a building, we've got a requirement in here that if the building's next to residential, you know, we have a picture of a setback and so forth. if it's not next to residential then they might just step back for reducing massing visual and so forth and so they would then have set backs that might not be big enough to put any open space that people could be in and so then your 40 percent use of something that's not usable doesn't make sense anymore am i taking this through correctly where have i gone wrong

I may ask Monica here for some assistance. I'm going to try and look up a couple of things to cross-reference. You can check with the consultant if they have an immediate response or not.

Yes, so thank you for that. Okay, so when there is a required upper story step back, It is an attempt to make sure that should, where there's a required upper story step back, that space is usable. And the step back requirements are deep enough such that it should be usable.

And that's the key word to jump in. It's the required piece. So in your example, Council Member Rennie, if a building is next to residential, they'd be required to set it back 40 feet to third and above stories. That would create a usable opportunity to put in the 40% of open space. But if they simply were, it was next to another commercial property, and they set it back five feet just to articulate the mass, that's not their requirement, that's their choice, and they wouldn't be required to create usable open space up there.

And so it's worded. I don't have to go check at the wording to find it that that's the way it is worded.

Yeah, this is in the elevated open space. It reads a minimum of 40% of the area resulting from required upper story building step back shall be designated to be usable open space. This space may take the form of a deck terrace roof garden and yada yada.

Okay, thank you. Um, so continuing on this slide, we talk about landscape space of 20%, but then we talk about community recreation space of 100 square feet per unit. Um, is so are those two additive or is some of the 20% landscape could be used for the 100 square feet per unit?

THE LANDSCAPE AREA IS LOOKING AT THE SITE AS A WHOLE. THE PRIVATE RECREATION SPACE.

I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE COMMUNITY.

THANK YOU FOR THE

MAY HAVE TO LOOK INTO THAT A LITTLE BIT DEEPER TO GET BACK TO YOU.

SO SORT OF CONTINUING ALSO THIS 100 SQUARE FEET PER UNIT SOUNDS GREAT FOR, YOU KNOW, SOMETHING THAT MAYBE HAS 30 UNITS IN IT. WHAT HAPPENS IF WE'VE GOT A TALLER BUILDING AND OUR SITE HAS 100 UNITS IN IT? NOW WE'RE TALKING ABOUT A VERY space to be needed for community recreation space and i was wondering for example north forty phase one is not very tall would it meet this hundred square feet per unit of community recreational space to the total total out there is three hundred twenty five units so three hundred twenty five times on a square feet is uh... a lot of area do they meet this

I'm not sure specifically. I'm not sure if Director Paulson has an answer to that. We've seen a variety of projects that haven't made it to public hearings that are at the townhome scale and at the multi, you know, seven, eight, nine story, and they're meeting some of the open space requirements in different ways, and some are waving out of it. I can...

So they would meet this open space requirement, then? You're saying... I'm trying to put a nickel in for sort of larger...

uh... into the system to see if it works for these larger projects i think there's there's recognition and attention paid to both of the kind of scales that we're seeing the developer needs to kind of step up and and try to meet the standard through uh... a smart site design for the community recreation space it can be done uh... a number of different ways uh... it can be done through uh... you know common barbecue areas we've seen that we've seen i think the genuine automotive project had like a grove um that gets to that standard If you had a tall building with 100 units in it, or a large site, it may be a little bit more challenging, but the idea here is that this is approachable, and we didn't get any feedback from the design community that this was a challenge. And returning to your first question, there is a provision on page nine under standard 11.1 that stipulates that if a building that the community recreation space can be used to satisfy that landscape requirement. Which was the first piece, the 40 or the 20 percent.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so I it probably doesn't matter because most of these large projects are going to have twenty percent and be going to get the density bonus they can waive it anyway if it doesn't work and the idea is to as you said try to get them to work towards this i was just trying to guess whether we would ever get this in larger projects or not. We've seen a bunch of projects come through where the developer is scrapping to try to get to the minimum density and we're arguing over whether a street counts in the calculation or not and stuff like that and so this really is going to make a big deal I think for them when they're if they're trying to get to some minimum density requirements kind of thing. And and I, I just wonder if we'll ever get it because of that. And I look at the. The large site, we didn't get much open space there at all. Because they were trying to get to some density and that's a good point.

I mean, these standards in 11.1, they've been modified slightly. They're not. whole cloth new, so we have been using them in projects. To your point, I think the density at the three-story level can create some pushback against these requirements, and waivers have been used in some cases. In the case of the lodge project, you might be happy to know that more open space was introduced during the building permit level.

Okay, that's good. All right, thank you. Council Member Badami?

I'm looking at the direction that council gave staff back in 2024, I think it was May 7th. And that was to work on view, architectural style, high quality design style. And what I'm hearing, and I can understand the difficulty in trying to pin down architectural style. But what I find odd is that we have a town architect, and we've had him for years, yet we didn't get any input from him. And I almost would like to have him review this, just to get his input. We don't have to take it, but we left him out, but we spent two years with focus groups and talking to everyone but him, and he knows Los Gatos. That being said, along with that, because I would like to see that before this goes forward, or at least this come back to us. I like that 50 foot distance, 1.3 that Mr. Paulson had said would be an easy swap out. I also would like to see this come back with whatever staff would come up with the wording or craft to incorporate the temperature and lighting that was brought up by the Vice Mayor and the Mayor. So those are things that are kind of concerning me at this point before I can just put my stamp of approval on it.

Go ahead.

Thank you. I did want to say I appreciate the adjustment on the bike parking, that instead of tying it to parking spaces, that it's tied to square footage or units because I think we don't know what's going to happen with parking, and so that could be a slippery thing. I did have one suggestion. I'm not going to wordcraft from here, but in terms of the proposed language for 7.2, If we took their exact wording for the first paragraph where it talks about exterior lighting shall be fully shielded and restrain light to a minimum 30 degrees, that was all of our wording. I like that they took out, it goes to adjacent properties as opposed to adjacent residential zoned properties because that does take into account open space, animal habitat, anything. So I like that change. uploading is prohibited all exterior light sources shall have a correlated color temperature of twenty seven hundred calvin or lower that's a good change on their next sentence but we could do that might remove any concern would be where they say all non-essential outdoor lighting take non-essential out So all outdoor lighting shall be equipped with automatic controls programmed to extinguish lighting by 11 p.m. or when the illuminated area is no longer in use, whichever occurs first. Lighting required by the California building code or fire code for safety or access is exempt. I mean, that just answers the question right there without saying, oh, is there any other... And then maybe omit the last sentence about the exterior landscape being minimum. I think that gets to... non-objective you know if we if we say it should be designed and located so the light's minimum necessary to support the activity designated i don't know that we're going to want to go in and say well what exact activities are you doing and how much light do you need if the light is 2700 kelvin or lower it shouldn't be an issue so i would be in favor of just omitting that last line but if steph wants to do more work on that those are just my suggestions And then, yeah, I don't want to drag this out. I know we've worked on it for a long time, but I also, I don't think it would hurt to have Larry Cannon review this when it comes, if it's going to come back to us with any other changes. So, you know, just to see that. Thank you.

Okay, not seeing any other hands raised. I'll just say I would be comfortable moving this forward this evening, but it sounds like there's maybe interest in... pushing this back. I think a lot of work has been done on this and would never want to rush a process this big and that's taken a while already. My only thought on getting this done in a more timely manner is if an SB 330 project is submitted tomorrow and we don't have this in place, then it's adhering to our old standards. I think it makes sense to try to get this in Sooner than later the the changes that I don't know what other changes would be changed. I don't know what other changes would occur from Speaking with you know an additional architect. It sounds like we had a lot of architectural input on this So I would be ready to move this forward and would be open to hearing a motion, but Also open to deferring council member Judas

I appeared to make a motion. Um, to, uh, accept the planning commission's recommendations up the resolution, approving changes and additions to the towns of. Defend and use with 3 modifications. Um, 1 review this with. Architect Larry cannon number. To adopt, uh, vice mayors. Objections about lighting and 3 to adopt a 50 foot rather than a 4, but distant from. A single family residences, I don't know if there were other things that I missed. 3, and then to bring that back to the council.

Yes, Council Member Badami.

I'll second that because that's pretty much repeats what I said when I gave my input.

Yeah, Vice Mayor, Council Member Rennie. So I just want to make sure I understand the motion. So the motion's not to approve this, it's to make some changes and bring it back again. Is that with the motion? Because I don't know how we have Larry Cannon review it if we've approved it. So we could approve it with those changes, ask him to bring it back. And if there needs to be more changes, we could do more changes. But as the mayor suggested, maybe we approve it with the two changes that we know we can do and then ask for Larry's review. And if it... ELICITS MORE CHANGES, WE THEN CAN DO IT, BUT IF WE APPROVE IT NOW, THEN WE KNOW WE'RE IN PLACE FOR THE NEXT PROJECT THAT WOULD USE DENSITY BONUS TO GET WAIVERS AND SO FORTH.

YEAH, I'D BE SUPPORTIVE OF THAT. YEAH, COUNCIL MEMBER HUGHES, CAN YOU CLARIFY?

YEAH, TO CLARIFY MY MOTION, IT WAS TO ACCEPT THE PLANNING COMMISSION'S RECOMMENDATIONS AS A STARTING POINT. And, uh, and the solution, I would say, not stop the. But except the, the resolution as a starting point. With 3 modifications suggested, uh. Which are review with the town architect. Uh, number 2 advice, Aristo suggestions on lighting. and number three, adopt a 50 foot from single family residences. So I hope that clarifies. I also just wanted to emphasize the value of Mr. Cannon's review. He's been a town architect. He's reviewed many multifamily buildings as well. He is very familiar with architectural styles and in particular, He's familiar with the concept of neighborhood compatibility. And as I mentioned, it was, you know, my suggestion about architectural styles was not to create a list or of architectural styles that are permitted in the town, but to allow variety, but to take into consideration architectural style and neighborhood compatibility. That is not part of my motion to include that. I just wanted to get his input. On the document that's been prepared and his experience. With the town of Los Gatos. Thank you.

I think Council Member Reddy makes a good point. I mean, we never know when another project's going to come in and, you know, we saw that when we couldn't quite get the housing element done and Builder's Remedies came in and I think given the amount of work that's gone in here and given The architects who do work in this community and design good buildings that attended the workshops and gave their input. I would like to make a substitute motion because I want something done as soon as possible. And then with the option to tweak it would be to accept the planning commissions. suggestions and with what parts the staff adopted and didn't so as presented to us in the existing draft document with the addition of the language for 7.2 as I described earlier and you don't need a clarification on that okay thank you and then the changing the forty-foot setback where as building taller than two stories is adjacent to single-family homes to a fifty-foot step back I just moved to adopt that and then ask if we can then have the town architect review these and get to hear his feedback and if it seems substantial we can reopen it or at least read that and then have a decision about whether there's additions and changes we want to make. But I would like to have this huge substantial improvement in our standards implemented ASAP.

YES. I CAN SECOND THAT. I WONDER IF THAT WAS ANY DIFFERENT THAN COUNCILMEMBER HUGHES' MOTION, THE PROBLEM BEING HE WAS BREAKING UP SOME. I'M NOT SURE THAT WAS DIFFERENT OR NOT.

MY IMPRESSION IS HE WAS NOT ADOPTING IT.

OKAY. I'LL SECOND.

And through the mayor, staff just wants, I just like to jump in for Cannon's review. We're happy to facilitate that. I'm not sure what that would cost. The budget that was allocated for this was for the LWC work. So we'll have to work internally and get an estimate from Mr. Cannon and potentially have to come back for a budget adjustment, but we can work internally and bring that back if needed.

Yeah, what's your ballpark on,

It's very hard to guess. I think, you know, a single family house review for context is around $3,000. One of these big projects is $10,000 to $20,000. Reviewing these development standards could be probably in the ballpark of a large project or more.

Yeah, okay. So I wouldn't support that.

Before you have him review it, can you come back to us with a price estimate for him and then we can make a decision at another meeting?

Yeah, absolutely. That's how we work with him. We send him a project and say, what's your estimate? And then we, so we can return with that estimate and then council can provide direction.

Okay. So my motion does not include that it automatically goes to him that we find out to clarify. Okay. Manager. Oh, we're good.

Thank you. I can second that. Yeah. Okay. So that motion has second go to council member.

I'm inclined to support the motion because I. Have been an advocate for objective design standards for some time and I know that. We're never going to get it perfect and we just need to keep moving toward something that really does work on supporting our character. And so. I will agree with that. I did have one question for staff. Have we used all the budget that was allocated to this project so far? Or is there any remaining budget?

I have, thank you for that. I have invoices through July and there's just over $10,000 left. So I'm not sure what our invoices look like for August now that August is closed out. So essentially the budget is close to being exhausted.

Okay, I'm just going to express my opinion that I will support the motion, but. I think that money spent on our town architect who has tremendous knowledge is well worth it for for those residents of our town who really think that the character of the town is important. And it would add, I think, a level of knowledge that the council would have. in approaching this going forward. Thank you.

Are there further comments?

I just wanted to clarify the motion would be to adopt the resolution and the changes would be made to the exhibit one of the resolution? Correct.

Okay, then it looks like we're ready for a vote. Can we please have a roll call vote?

Council Member Rennie?

Aye.

Council Member Hootis?

Aye.

Council Member Badami? Aye. Vice Mayor Risto? Aye. Mayor Moore?

Aye. That passes unanimously. Thank you all very much. So we have one more item, item 10. I think we can get through it relatively quickly, but do folks need a break? No? OK, then we will go to item 10. I don't know if staff has a report. This was on consent, so probably not. Does the town manager want to say anything on the item?

Sure, just as a refresher, the Council allocated $3 million out of its general fund reserves to set aside in the creation of a new long-term community benefit fund. And this was due to the process we entered into to sell the Fort Tate Museum, which eventually did sell for a higher price. The price came in at $3.8 million. Our presumption was that the remaining amount above the $3 million would have been something you would have also wanted to contribute to the long-term community benefit fund. What we're recommending in terms of the allocation, which is something we said we would come back to you, is reimburse the general fund for the $3 million now that we've closed the sale and received those funds. The remaining amount deduct from it the cost to the town for its attorney and staff cost to process the entire sale and that the remaining balance would go into the long-term community benefit fund into its fund balance without allocating it for a specific project.

Thank you. Okay, so I think I'll go to public comment first unless anyone has any questions. We have three comment cards here in the room. The first is from Janet Wolfe. The second is from Rita Kelly. The third is from Jan Schwartz, in that order.

It's been a really interesting meeting. I'm glad that I was here. I just wanted to say that I'm here to advocate for the arts. I know that what you're talking about is a long-term community benefit fund, and I can't think anything that would benefit the community more than embracing the arts. Art causes conversation. It causes critical thinking. It brings communities together. It brings people into communities, both as residents and as visitors. And I think that right now, I'm really pleased that the town passed a motion or past whatever it is that allowed. The arts to have an allocation of a half a percent of new building projects. But what I'm finding, or what I'm seeing is that. Most developers want to do that on their own property and that's wonderful. It's bringing art to the town, but it's not accessible in the way that art. Can be to the entire town it's it's only accessible to people that go to those particular sites. I'm not going to overburden you with a lot of ideas about art, but I will talk about 1 project that's already in existence. And so it seems like a pretty easy lift in order to enhance the town and that's the foot bridge. Um, the foot bridge is really beloved in this town and it's in a horrible state of disrepair right now. There was a 10,000 dollar a year fund. I think that supported that foot bridge. It supplied the opportunity for children to go to summer camp and create things that engaged in the town and their parents were really. Behind it, their grandparents were behind it. The community really loves that as 1 example of public art and it seems that it's already in place. And if the funding can be allocated out of the community benefit fund. And maybe not just on a 1 year basis, but on a long term basis, I think it would really enhance the town and also show the residents of the town. That's something that's near and dear to them is being considered. It also will enhance the museum because it gives them an opportunity to engage with the community and they have run summer camps for children to be able to create our work for that. And those summer camps have consistently had waiting lists. So there's a call for it and I'm asking you to please. Provide. That 1 piece of public art, and then maybe look in the future at being an advocate for the arts in this community. I think that. I travel all over the world. I just went to half moon Bay today and their town is filled with murals and mosaics and that that happens all over the world. I think it brings people in and brings people together. So, thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to Rita Kelly followed by Jan Schwartz.

All right. Just to reinforce this point, my name is Rita Kelly. I'm a longtime Los Gatos resident, and I'm the treasurer for NUMU. And I'm here also to ask you to allocate a portion of the long-term community benefit fund to restore funding for the Forbes Mill Youth Footbridge Vinyls. For more than 30 years, this bridge has given Los Gatos children something extraordinary, the opportunity to see their own artwork become a part of the town they call home. In 2012, Los Gatos Saratoga Recreation initiated the Digital Vinyl Mural Project, and in 2018, New Mood joined to deliver the camp, integrating history, civics, and museum-level instruction. Every June, the camp serves 45 young artists, 71% are from Los Gatos, and the remaining 29% are from our immediate neighboring communities. These children visit our historic Forbes Mill Annex. They walk the Creek Trail. They visit our library and the Chamber of Commerce. They learn about the history of Los Gatos and meet the people who serve our community, from the town manager, mayor, and the police chief. Then they create something of their own about life in Los Gatos. And we put it on the bridge for everyone to see. This is a powerful message to a child. Your creativity matters, your history matters, and you are a part of this community. Unfortunately, after the town's traditional 10,000 annual funding for the printing, installation, and upkeep was eliminated last fiscal year, as Janet said, the bridges begin to deteriorate. Panels are peeling and at least one has been vandalized. For a relatively modest investment, we can change that. I respectfully ask you to consider using a portion of the long-term community benefit fund to restore support for the Forbes Mill Youth Footbridge Vinyls. Public art is not simply decoration. It tells us who we are and what we value. And when that art is created by our children, inspired by our history, and displayed in the heart of our town, it becomes something even more important, a bridge between generations. Please restore funding for the Forbes Mill Youth Footbridge Finals. Thank you.

Thank you. Go to Jan Schwartz.

Good evening. I'm Jan Schwartz, and I'm on the board of New Museum Los Gatos. And I wish I had just said everything that Rita said so well. She's fabulous. A great member of the board. We have a lot of support here from the board and from Kimberly Snyder, whom I think you know, who's the executive director. one thing that uh... it we've done here is we've worked with the rec department so i think this is an example of the community coming together the museum and the rec department we're sharing this and making it available to everybody it benefits both of us and all of us in the community and it would be nice to see some funds from the previous museum but to support the current museum And have that there for the community. I think you're all familiar. I had a picture of the footbridge, but I think you're all. Familiar with it, but thank you.

Thank you. All right, that concludes public comment on that item and I'll just share. So the reason I pulled this item, I fully support the direction staff has taken. I think it, of course, makes sense to reimburse the general fund with cost and then. put the remaining money into the long-term community benefit fund. The reason I pulled the item was I'm interested in providing direction for this, uh, the distribution of the long-term community benefit fund funding to come back to the council. Um, because I, I think that, uh, that funding should not just sit. Um, and I think it's important we have a discussion about that. Um, and so I think there's a lot of good ideas. I, I, Like the ideas we just heard, I think there's a lot of projects in the capital program that could be funded during the capital budget process. We talked about fully funding the public restroom project to ensure that that is done in an expedient fashion and hopefully done sooner than later. We have talked about a variety of projects within that. And so my interest is in having that discussion come back to the council. Yes, Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate the staff report on this and in fact there is specifically a line in there that use of the long-term community benefit fund can be discussed during the CIP budgeting process and I think that is the appropriate time to do it because I appreciate NUMU coming forward. My kids had art on the bridge before it got covered up by other art. It is a favorite. There's also probably quite a few other groups that would like to come forward and you know all on the same day at the same time and so i agree i think going with the staff report i think we should replenish the three million dollars that we took from the general fund to set aside in the special fund we've now got that three million take the excess put that also into the long-term community benefit And at the time that we do the CUP budgeting, have a discussion about what to do with those funds. And if the town manager can remind us, approximately when in the year will that occur? When are we gonna be working on the CIP?

When would you like to be working on the CIP?

You know, I know that it feels like we just finished it.

Yeah, we start the budget process in January, so somewhere around March. Christina, that sounds about right. March, April for CIP. Maybe April, May.

Nicole's saying, no, no, I just finished.

I'm thinking we need to be talking about projects before then. I think we need to be talking about projects in, like, January, February. Okay. That would be, that's what I'm thinking anyway.

Within the next six months.

Yeah. Okay, so it sounds like we have that opportunity to come up to have that discussion. So I will go ahead and make a motion to approve a revenue budget adjustment of $3,674,187 for the proceeds received from the sale of Fort Tate Avenue and allocate the net proceeds according to the staff report where the three million goes into the general fund to replenish what we took and the excess goes into the long-term community benefit fund. And that we have the discussion at CIP time of what to do with that fund.

I'll second. Okay, so just wanted to ask a few questions on this. So for the Parks and Public Works director regarding the CIP. So one of my questions on this is, you know, if we wanted to distribute some of this funding for the public restroom, for instance, we've only allocated funding for the design so far. Are you going to run out of, are you going to be ready to do, what's your timeline on that project? So we know if we're holding up the process.

Our intent is to use the available money that we have to finalize the design, kind of narrow down the, I think we still owe you some feedback on location. So I actually think I'm hoping that the timing is perfect, right? So that by the time we're ready to talk to you about what our budget needs are, we have the construction costs of that restroom.

Okay, and I guess this is sort of moot if we're saying we're going to be talking about CIP very early in the year. I don't think we talked about CIP so early in the year. I think in 2026 we had sort of priority setting in February, early February, and then I think CIP wasn't until March or April at the earliest. And so, you know... So that's, I guess, one question. The other thought that I had here is that we could address some of this during mid-year because we'll have a mid-year budget adjustment for sure in usually January, February. So that would be sort of my other question is when are we thinking we will actually talk about the CIP?

I'll have to consult with staff because part of the calculus includes looking at strategic priorities and potential changes because you want to also align behind those as well as how we're going to prioritize very limited capital funds for a lot of needs.

Okay, so maybe the friendly amendment, totally hear that. Maybe the friendly amendment that I would make is that this could be know the right way to say this, but that it could be considered during mid-year if we have adequate information. I'm looking to not delay our projects that are moving forward that we need money for.

Does that need to be in the motion or is that just instruction to staff that

I think after consulting with staff on how we want to lay out, we haven't laid out the calendar for the budget discussion for next year. And so when we lay that calendar, obviously you want to have a conversation about the capital projects and specifically within that, the use of the long-term community benefit fund.

Yeah. Early. Yeah.

Earlier. Yeah.

Earlier. Okay. Um, I think Q to set his hand up first and we'll go to council member.

Yeah, I'm, I'm supportive of the motion. Um, as it's stated, and I think that the CIP is the right way to look at the projects together. We already got into a discussion tonight about the restroom project, which I think is inappropriate. I think that we should be looking at these together and we should be looking at all options for this public restroom as well. I wouldn't be comfortable with accelerating anything out of the process that we've already put in place.

You know, so I hesitate to ask this question because I feel like we've drifted from the agendized item, but there's concern that, you know, it was sort of implied that a project runs out of money and then it sits until we do the next budget year. I wanted to ask the question, you know, either for Town Manager or for the Director of Parks and Public Works, If we're designing a project, we get done, maybe even early, is it just going to sit there until the next budget year, or are you going to then say, okay, well, the next thing to do is we need to go get some more money. Are you going to bring it to us in the middle of the year when it's needed, or is it going to sit there? I think that's the concern.

So the way we structured the tiered program is the tier one projects are projects that we have. We believe we have the staffing and the funding to be able to perform. And so, in terms of this specific project, the design work was what was budgeted as a tier one project and correct me Nicole. We did not budget constructions that tier two, because we're ascertaining what the solution and options are with its cost. Correct?

That's correct.

And so in this case, no, we would not have an immediate follow-up since we neither have a tier one nor two for construction. We would stay at the design and know here's what we're shooting for, here's what it costs.

But I don't think he answered my question. The concern is you finished tier one mid-year, you're ready to start the next portion of the project, but you haven't funded it because you didn't know what the fund was. And the question is, is it now going to sit for four months, not moving ahead, waiting for the next budget year?

That's exactly what would happen in this case, because when we did the tier one projects for the current year, the bathroom was the only community out facing project that we put due to the limited funds and the capital funds. Now, that doesn't stop us from modifying the in the middle of the year to actually do the construction. And so that's a conversation we can have. But as of right now, that's how we designed the program.

And I just, again, I don't think this is this budget item. So I would just say, staff is now aware of our concern and we'll let you think about doing something to keep it moving.

Yeah, in terms of projects, there are projects that Public Works does, for example, designing environmental for a large project that we may submit for a grant. And so we would stop at the design and environmental so better position to either go to VTA or go to the federal government to get funding for it. The bathroom project or the projects of this scale would not typically be parks projects unless maybe a Prop 40 state grant that could apply. And so therefore we would have to shepherd that along in course of work. But clearly, since it's the only community facing project we are putting on the docket this year, the presumption would be it's that important that we decided to do to design that we would not want this one sitting there for a long period of time. And that we would want, as we see closing out the fiscal year and doing our act for and seeing what our ending fund balances change are the opportunity to fund the full construction.

Yeah, it sounds like staff is hearing the feedback loud and clear. I think that's exactly it. So I guess the friendly direction or thought that I would provide is if the design, for whatever reason, is completed in the next couple of months, I think the council would want to be made aware of that, at least through a weekly update or something like that. So the council is aware of the status of the project and then could choose to agendize something on further funding if we chose to.

I would just let staff take that. I mean, clearly for the fact that we put that on the schedule for tier one was it is a priority. A bathroom at the park is important. And so when we complete and ascertain what the cost is, I think we need to have a conversation about what direction we want to go because that will dictate to you how much money are we talking about. Right.

Agreed. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Any other feedback? Good. Okay. Motion and a second. I will call a roll call vote.

Council Member Rennie?

Aye.

Council Member Huttis?

Aye.

Council Member Badami? Aye. Vice Mayor Risto? Aye. Mayor Moore?

Aye. Passes unanimously. Thank you all. We'll now turn to council matters. We'll start with Council Member Rennie.

I have nothing of significance to report.

Thank you. Um, uh, council member, uh, just a couple of meetings.

Um, let's see. I met with members of the West Valley Muslim Association and also of the neighborhood organization, Farley Road, a number of times. I met with a resident who raised some questions and concerns about the police contract with Saratoga, and I'm looking forward to a follow-up conversation about that. And I attended a meeting put on by Representative Liccardo concerning land use, local control, and facilities for the federal government. And I think I had some questions for staff about that. And let's see, repeat with the same people. So that's it.

Go to Vice Mayor Risto and then Council Member Badami.

Thank you. Instead of going through all the meetings I went to, I actually, I want to thank, give a thank you to Chris Miller, who's a former Los Gatos Union School District trustee and also an advocate for mental health for bringing something to my attention. At our August 18th meeting, while speaking about the Los Gatos-Monte Sueno Police Department and the positive outcomes of de-escalation in difficult circumstances, where more aggressive approaches elsewhere have led to tragic outcomes, I inadvertently used outdated and insensitive language in referring to someone dying by suicide. Unfortunately, I was accurately quoted in the paper using the words commit suicide. Suicide is the result of a mental health crisis, not a crime. I apologize for my words that may have added to the grief of those experiencing profound loss of a family member or friend. As someone who knows deep grief, I truly am sorry for my poor choice of words.

Council Member Domi.

I don't have much to report tonight other than on the 25th I participated in a meeting of the Council Policy Committee with Mayor Moore relating to AI. And I've also met with residents over town issues of their concern. That's all I have.

Thank you. Go through these. Quickly, so I attended the Morning Rotary Endless Summer Celebration, which is a wonderful way to end the summer, our summer music in the park. So that was wonderful. Also gave remarks at the last jazz in the plaza and last music in the park. Just have to give a huge compliment to staff on supporting jazz and also being very involved in music in the park. I think this is one of our best summers yet. of music in the park, really well attended and really wonderful community events. So very impressed with that, especially being that we are short staffed for most of those because we usually have an events person supporting that. I was appointed to the Cal City's Young Electeds member group. This is a new group of six young electeds from throughout the state advocating on behalf of us token young electeds. I attended the City's Association Executive Committee meeting, met with the developer for the proposal along Alberta Way. I attended the Lick Observatory 150th celebration, which is put on by a Los Gatos resident named Lauren Kinzel. Really, really amazing celebration of Lick Observatory. If you all haven't been to Lick, I hugely recommend it. It's amazing to have it in our backyard. And there was a Nobel laureate who spoke, and Victor Glover, who is an astronaut and a fellow Cal Poly alum, spoke. It was a really amazing event, all put on by an incredible Los Gatos. I met with representatives from Los Gatos Saratoga Assistance League which is a great service club that I think deserves lots of love and recognition and I think sometimes gets forgotten amongst some of our other service clubs like Rotary and they do a lot of good work for children and youth and families in poverty in our community. I attended the inaugural Rinconada Hills Senior Resource Fair, which is a great event for older adults in the Rinconada Hills neighborhood. The Rinconada Hills neighborhood has nearly 500 residences. It's a really large community, and most of us haven't been there because it's gated. And so it was nice to be let in and then also great to engage with some of those residents. It was a super event. I was there for three hours, and I didn't stop talking the whole time. So it was a very active group. And lastly, I attended Silicon Valley Pride. I'll turn things over to the town manager and then town attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd just like to highlight that we do have some unscheduled vacancies for commission. So those who are interested in serving our town can go to our website and find the process to apply for those positions. And then lastly, Monday, September 7th is Labor Day. And due to the holiday, the administrative offices will be closed. Yes, the police department will still be operating on Labor Day. With that, I'll turn it back to the mayor. Thank you. And to the town attorney.

Thank you, Mayor. The Town Council met earlier this evening in closed session to discuss anticipated litigation pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.9, and there's no reportable action at this time.

Thank you very much. With one of our earliest meetings in a while, at 9.15 or so, this meeting is adjourned.