City Council and Authorities Concurrent - Special Meeting

All right. Yes, I'm online and I posted my agenda. Nobody's in the room. Thank you, Nora.

Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you for applying, Nazmul. My first question is, what development in Santa Clara is a good example of planning, and why?

Thank you. Do you have any thoughts about the El Camino specific area plan?

Yes. Thank you very much. Planning commissioners are sometimes faced with strong opinions from residents, developers, organizations, and other stakeholders. How would you evaluate a project fairly and independently when there is significant public advocacy on both sides?

What development in Santa Clara is a good example of planning and why?

Thank you, Esmir. Thanks for applying, Jonathan. My question to you is, do you have any thoughts about the El Camino specific area plan?

Yes. Santa Clara continues to face significant pressure for new housing and development, while residents are concerned about traffic, infrastructure, neighborhood character, and quality of life. How would you approach balancing these competing interests when considering a development proposal?

Thank you very much for applying. Thank you. What development in Santa Clara is a good example of planning and why?

Thank you, Jeff. Do you have any thoughts about the El Camino Real specific plan?

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I think it's the third one. We got you. Don't worry. Thanks for applying, Jeff. Santa Clara continues to face significant pressure for new housing and development. While the residents are concerned about traffic, infrastructure, neighborhood character, and quality of life. How would you approach balancing these competing interests when considering a development proposal?

Planning commissioners are sometimes faced with strong opinions from residents, developers, organized, and they get other stakeholders. Didn't write this one. I'm just reading it. How would you evaluate a project fairly and independently when there is significant public advocacy on both sides?

Thank you very much for applying. Thank you. Do you have any thoughts about the El Camino Real specific plan?

Thank you, Nicholas, for applying. Santa Clara continues to face significant pressure for new housing and development while residents are concerned about traffic, infrastructure, neighborhood character, and quality of life. How will you approach balancing these competing interests when considering a development proposal?

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thanks for applying, Nicholas. Planning Commissioners are sometimes faced with strong opinions from residents, developers, organized groups, and other stakeholders. How would you evaluate a project fairly and independently when there is significant public advocacy on both sides?

What development in Santa Clara is a good example of planning and why?

I actually knew that. So Santa Clara continues to face significant pressure for new housing and development while residents are concerned about traffic, infrastructure, neighborhood character and quality of life. How would you approach balancing these competing interests when considering a development proposal?

Thank you, Sean, for applying. Sorry I missed you yesterday.

Planning commissioners are sometimes faced with strong opinions from residents, developers, organized stakeholders. How would you evaluate a project fairly and independently when there is significant public advocacy on both sides?

I believe the instructions that were given to us is if there's more than four candidates, we do two votes.

Okay. I'll go for Jeff Barraza and Nazmul Hai.

Jonathan Marinari and Sean Williams. Council Member Park.

I'm going to go the odd man out. I'm going to say Nick and John.

Or we can look that Jonathan has the most number one votes. Or you can do that.

I'd like to make a motion. First, we need to accept the resignation of Nancy Biagini, unfortunately. And I will nominate Jonathan Marinaro as our next planning commissioner and then Sean Williams on our eligibility list, which will be in place for six months.

I can do it, or somebody can do it. Yeah, no, it's not on here.

Yes, agenda was posted and accessible to the public and nobody's in my room right now.

Yeah. I'm going to make a few comments before I ask my questions to set the stage for my comments. VTA's project, the Bart Silicon Valley project, which this refers to, is a very long-term project. It's over 20 years in the making. And one of the things that the grand jury is interested in is having longevity with the commissioners, the committee members, because the project is so long, you lose a lot of institutional knowledge, you lose a lot of history if you keep changing members, board members. But that balances against expertise and interest. So this project is, you know, I've been very s

So my question is that I don't really have a question. I just have the comments. My question is that is there any way that the city can try to advocate to change the governance of VTA? That's my only question.

That is very similar to my question because I too was frustrated with past grand jury reports and this one was in my mind much better but we have very little control over things so I felt staff's answers were very good. and I can support that, but my question is knowing that our representative needs to be committed and then they have to go off for a year is confusing to me. So I was wondering if that could be any part of our answer back that some of the other agencies, can they have more of a consistent vote or consistent voice on this committee?

I'd like to make a motion for, oh, sorry.

I thought we did, yeah. I'd like to make a motion for staff recommendation. Second it.

Yeah, so I wanted to make some comments. I didn't really have any questions, but I actually was a little bit worried about our responses because, like many of the other council members, I was here during the previous civil grand jury reports. And some of those reports were, I mean, I'll just say they were factually incorrect. And I was worried that maybe perhaps with Gilman amnesia we would accept a report that wasn't exactly pointed at us. But the fact that we looked at the report, we looked at the recommendation, we looked at the findings and came up with Well, this is what we need to do. Th

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, staff, for presenting the report. I don't have any questions, but I do have the comments. As mentioned by a couple of my colleagues, we actually disagreed with some of the previous grand jury report, but this one is basically I agree to a large extent, especially because of the project I discussed and about the board issues. And I remember that we had a VTA grand jury a few years back which touched the topic of expert nominations on the board. I'm not sure where that is because losing the institutional knowledge by rotation of council members, elected official

Yeah, this is actually the third grand jury report concerned about the governance of ETA. So this has been coming up year after year about the governance of ETA. And unfortunately, staff and the board have basically ignored these grand jury reports year after year. So I firmly believe that the governance needs to change somehow. And I agree with the grand jury report on that. Thank you.

Yes Motion carries unanimously 5-0 and with that we'll adjourn the meeting at 730 Mayor vice mayor one quick Request like we you know, we always recuse the absentee so I would like to make a motion to recuse Mayor Gilmore and customer Cox for today's meeting before you adjourn.