City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening folks, thank you for joining us. Please find your seats, we'll get started. Thank you. Good evening everyone, thank you for those who are finding your seats. Before we begin tonight's meeting, our deputy city clerk would like to make a brief statement regarding the public comment portion of our meeting.

Thank you. Welcome to the City Council regular meeting this Monday, October 5th. Everyone, please rise if you're able for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you, Deputy City Clerk, please call the roll.

Here. Thank you and welcome everyone. We're excited to be here in person tonight with options for those who choose not to be here in person to still participate virtually. Thank you for your cooperation and for helping us maintain an efficient and accessible meeting environment. There are several ways to participate in public comment tonight. For those attending in person, you may complete a yellow request to speak slip and hand it to the deputy city clerk. If you're participating remotely in Zoom, you may use a raise your hand feature and you'll be called upon at the appropriate time. If you'

Thank you very much and please stay there a moment so we can present the proclamation and take a photo with you and any other police officers who wish to join, thank you. And Julian's mom. Thank you all. We have another ceremonial item for Hispanic Heritage Month, which we are also celebrating at this time. I'd like to invite to the podium Adriana Fernandez-Arriada from El Concilio, San Mateo County. And I have this proclamation that I will read and then give you the floor. And thank you for joining us. Whereas, National Hispanic Heritage Month was enacted into law on August 17, 1988, and is f

Thank you. Please stay a moment so we can take a photo. Okay, one more. Code enforcement officer appreciation week. I'd like to invite to the podium to celebrate Zachary Dahl, director of community development, and anyone else who's part of code enforcement. I feel like I saw some faces. I have a proclamation to share. All right, I'll try my best. Whereas the city's code enforcement team. This seems like I may get some names wrong. And that would be unfortunate. So I'll just say the city's code enforcement team. many of whom are here with us today, are dedicated and highly qualified profession

Excellent. Please pardon us a moment while we come and join you for a photo. Thanks everybody for bearing with us as we had a lot to celebrate. We are now moving beyond the ceremonial portion of tonight's meeting, which includes the business items being considered by the council. For that reason, I would like to remind all in the room and online that at this time we'll be enforcing our rules of decorum. As such, we do not allow for cheering, jeering, or booing during the business portion of the meeting, as this tends to put a chill on public comment. Our goal is to ensure that all perspectives

Thank you, and at this time, given we have received quite a bit of public comment on items 11 and 12, I'm just going to start by pulling those items from consent calendar. And I will ask if anyone else has any other items they wish to pull. Seeing none, are there members of the public who wish to comment on any consent calendar item? Now would be the time to make your comment. This is for consent calendar items only. Although, I actually think, yeah, I wonder if we can separate this and perhaps I can take advice from the city manager.

Okay, thank you. Is there a motion from council to approve those items? So moved. Okay, thank you. We have a motion and a second. Deputy City Clerk, can you please call roll on those items?

Thank you. And at this time, given one of those items included appointing a new member to one of our commissions, or rather our district, I would like to invite our newly appointed commissioner to come to the front of the dais to receive the oath of office from our deputy city court. Thank you. Thank you very much. I did pull items 11 and 12 for discussion. With regard to item 11, I had a couple of questions for staff, but before we get to that, I think we could open public comment on that item.

Might I make a suggestion that instead of doing that, we look at the number of speakers and give them, instead of one minute, give them two minutes? That way we wouldn't have to, does that make sense? Wouldn't have to come up twice.

That sounds reasonable under the circumstances to me. Deputy City Clerk, perhaps you can count the number of requests.

While you're counting I would make a special motion that we limit public comment to one minute per item.

Thank you very much. Thank you to those who gave public comment. We're going to close public comment on item 11. And I just pulled this because I did want to ask a question or two about item 11 to staff. One was, well, actually before I do that, maybe I'll just quickly check to see if there was any response to any comments that we heard from staff before I asked.

Thank you. So we heard public comment from a few folks about the audit portion of, I think, you know, recommendation five. I'm going to go to the item to make sure I am following it in the report. But I mainly wanted to ask about that in our response letter, because For example, this current draft letter notes with regard to R5 that the audit report's recommendation has been implemented. Some folks are claiming that is not the case. Could you please speak to that?

We we did receive an email that noted that I mean, I think we've heard a little comments that what is shared may not be. A full report, but rather sharing of audit logging.

I see. So recommendation five I'm reading now says the audit reports produced by the ALPR operator should substantiate compliance. And what I think I'm hearing from you is that does not necessarily mean that those audit reports are to be published to the public, but rather as long as audits are being conducted, those audit reports that are being conducted and produced, are compliant with California law and our policy.

Okay, I appreciate this. Would you be willing to share the most recent audit report with council? Thank you very much. Those are my questions related to this item. Do any other council members have a question? Deputy Mayor Fernandez.

Just to address one of the public comments today, can you discuss whether the San Mateo Police Department works directly with ICE?

Thank you. Through the mayor, Mr. City Attorney, my question was, if we were to, so a suggestion was that maybe we want to accept this in a different way. Are there different alternatives to accepting this? I mean, do we have a legal requirement to be hitting this date? Or if we were to say, okay, let's schedule a further meeting, how would that work? Because then we wouldn't be in compliance per se with when the filing is supposed to be made.

Seeing no others, I'll thank the Chief for his time and mention that personally, I am satisfied with the answers to the questions, and I'm OK with moving ahead. on this item, so I will make a motion to, oh, I guess I'll just make the tiniest, pettiest addition, but if we could remove one R from my name, that would be great. City Attorney, did you, okay. So assuming that should be simple enough, I will make a motion to approve item 11. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Deputy City Clerk, may we have a roll call vote, please?

Thank you. So we do have one remaining item that was pulled, item 12. I'll just note before we finish tallying public comment for that item that if you commented on item 12 just a moment ago, well, I'll just say that if you're in line to give public comment, please, there's no need to repeat anything you may have mentioned earlier. That's all. But with that, Deputy City Clerk.

Thank you. I will close public comment on item 12. And I have I pulled this because I had a couple questions again. So thank you for your patience and understanding with this. But my first question was relating to comments we heard about the no disclosure language noted in our grand jury report, R6,

Thank you. I did, City Attorney, I did ask you a similar question earlier, and I wondered if you wouldn't mind sharing your thoughts.

Thank you both. I appreciate that. I also wanted to ask a little bit. Chief, you actually, I think alluded to it a little bit in our special session item. I was curious about what we, how long we, think we would be operating if we were to accept this amendment with both systems running simultaneously. We've heard concern about having two systems, even if they are in the same place, even if they are capturing similar data. It would seem to me that part of the idea behind this is that if, for example, we as a city felt comfortable with the axon system as opposed to the flock system, or found we

Thank you. Finally, is there any flexibility in this amendment that might allow us to potentially postpone this decision so that we could have a public meeting in between?

So even one month, you think, would be too long to wait?

OK, thank you. I'm just looking around to see if other council members have any questions or thoughts.

through the mayor. Sure. My question is going to be, if we accepted this offer and went forward with this contract, that doesn't preclude us from having a town hall six weeks from now. And it also doesn't preclude us from, hey, we changed our mind. I mean, we have a full year and some time to decide whether or not we're going to keep the contract and move forward with the contract. Is that accurate? That would be accurate. Thanks.

Thank you, Council Member Newsom. So I pulled this because in addition to hearing the public comment, which I feel like we would have heard whether I pulled it or not tonight, I wanted to ask a couple of questions and get a sense of more information about the item, where we were with it, what flexibility there might be. Partly because we haven't talked a lot about AOPRs here in council. This is the first time I've done it, and this is my fourth year. I WANTED TO DO, YOU KNOW, I FRANKLY UPON HEARING PUBLIC COMMENT ON THIS AND THE CONCERNS, MY FEELING, MY GUESS IS THAT IT'S THE TIP OF THE ICEBER

I think what I was proposing a few minutes ago is where I'm more comfortable. I think the contract is open-ended, so we have a full year to decide whether we're going to pursue it. Based on that, I would recommend that we don't lose the opportunity, but we also put on the calendar a town hall about this in the next month to two months. That's my suggestion.

If I could modify Councilmember Newsom's thought on this, I would be more comfortable with Councilmember Newsom's motion here where we put at least one community meeting on the calendar after and we calendar a revisit of this contract in a year's time.

I move that the council accepts the contract under the auspices of setting a community focused roundtable meeting within the next six weeks. Yeah.

That's fine, and then scheduling a revisit. By January. 2027. And agendizing this a year from today, not a year from the community meeting.

so if i might i think part of the issue is um we if we were to agree with this amendment um by the time we get to november 2027 my understanding is we would then to some extent be kind of locked in um so i i would ask that we consider a date before then

So let me just make a clarifying point, which is that I think the current use of Axon is a bit different from what is being proposed. The current use of Axon with body worn cameras, et cetera, is not shared with other jurisdictions, as was, I think, noted in the special session. Whereas if we are to go with an ALPR offering from them, it would be functionally similar to what we're using with Flock. And so it would be different.

through the mayor? Sure. I would just add to that that this is going to be a 12 month Bake-off perhaps is not the most elegant term, but that's exactly what it is. And so looking at a contract in six months when we're already going to be looking at it at the end of the period, I think it's just too good of effort. So I would recommend we go forward with this, and then the police department is going to come up with an evaluation and come back to us and let us know.

Yes, and I think I just want to quickly respond to something you mentioned when asking about what our plans are, if not this, for example, with regard to a growing city. And I think I just want to note that I don't feel that this item is necessarily a zero sum item related to the Arctic that we talked about in our special session today. This, I think, is a separate ask where we're talking about making an amendment considering something on top, albeit maybe not as big of an addition as could be explored in other contexts. But to me, I don't feel, personally, I am not I am not making a judgment

So just before we take a roll call vote on that.

Okay. Fine, we have a motion and a second. Deputy City Clerk, can you please call roll?

Thank you for that. Thank you very much everybody for.

Mr. Mayor can we take a three minute break for those who need to. Sure.

Okay, folks. Thank you. We're assembling our council again and can resume soon. Thank you, we'd like to return shortly. Please find your seats.

Mr. City Manager, can we have you return to your seat please, thank you.

Thank you, everybody. Now that we've concluded the consent calendar, we have general public comment. And members of the public. Wishing to comment on any item not appearing on our agenda tonight may address the City Council at this time. State law prevents Council from taking action on any matter not on the agenda. Your comments, however, may be referred to staff for follow-up. This public comment section is generally limited to a total of 15 minutes. However, that's subject to Council's discretion and can be extended if Council wishes to do so. If needed, an opportunity for additional public

Thank you. I'll close public comment. And we now can move on to the next item on our agenda, which is item 13, 1700 South El Camino Real below market rate alternative plan approval. Thank you to those from Community Development, Housing, who are joining us, including Van Diggins, Housing Specialist, for the presentation.

Thank you for your presentation. And at this time we can open up this item for public comment, so if anyone In chambers would like to comment, you may give a request to speak to the Deputy City Clerk. If you're online or on the phone, you may raise your hand. Deputy City Clerk, when you're ready, please let us know how many you have.

Thank you very much. Thank you to those who came and gave comment. I'm gonna close public comment. at this time for item number 13. I will just, REITERATE THAT I THINK AS WE ARE DISCUSSING THE BELOW MARKET RATE ALTERNATIVE WE'RE NOT NECESSARILY GOING TO BE WEIGHING IN ON ASPECTS OF THE PROJECT OUTSIDE OF THAT TONIGHT BUT YOUR PUBLIC COMMENTS HAVE BEEN RECORDED SO I DO FEEL THERE'S VALUE STILL OF COURSE IN YOUR COMING TONIGHT AND GIVING THESE COMMENTS AS WE HAVE future meetings related to that aspect of the development to come. I'm looking around to see if we have any questions or comments from

Thank you very much to the mayor. And I've actually spoken with several of the people who came up tonight. Thomas, you and I spoke earlier. And John, you communicated with me. And unfortunately, we were not able to. I would just like to make the offer that I would be happy to speak with all of you. We can't do it tonight. But I would love, John, you wrote to me. would love to sit down with all of you and talk about this separately because one of the things that I think is important is that while we are bound by certain regulations from state law we are very focused on trying to do everything w

Yeah, just so first off, I wanna make sure that everyone knows that I also heard all of you and I share your concern. If you have solar, not having a setback can be troubling. And so hopefully that can be addressed with the design standards of the project. And I'm sorry that that's not on the agenda tonight. That said, I do have a question that kind of came to mind listening to everyone's public comment. And that is if we go forward with this proposal and they build the building first without BMR and then the funding falls through, do we have the ability to make them go back and add BMR to the

but they couldn't actually have occupancy of the first building if they don't have any BMR units.

Thank you for addressing the question. Thank you. And the last question, or I guess would be more of a comment, would be I also am in agreement that in the future we should look at a scramble of the 17th and El Camino as part of this future development. Thank you.

OK. So I think this has been touched on a little bit, but just to maybe put a finer point on it, what options do we have, if any, beyond what's being proposed today by staff to potentially increase the certainty of building affordable homes, just given the public comment? I'm guessing that, well, rather than me guess, I'll just see if I can ask that question.

Let's see. I did hear some comments indicating some questions about whether this locks in the design. I guess I do wonder if, you know, I mean, it seems to me, nevermind. I think clearly we're being offered a proposal and if Council is interested in going ahead, it seems highly likely that that form will go to Planning Commission. And so I think that does kind of answer that question before I, I don't wanna waste folks' time. Do we have a date for the Planning Commission meeting if this were to go forward tonight?

ONE LAST THOUGHT. WHILE THIS IS GOING ON AND NOT TO TOTALLY push things aside, I think there's always an opportunity while the plans are happening, when we're talking about safety, when we're talking about traffic, when we're talking about the impact of the building on the surrounding neighborhood, to have discussions with the developer, as I'm sure you have, Mr. Blackwell, your client in previous buildings. This is always gonna be an issue, and I'm sure you wanna make this as successful an operation as we do, because there are a lot of affordable units in this. But I would hope there's an opp

Great. And I would really appreciate it if we were involved in that as well at a certain point. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. And with that, I will entertain a motion. I motion.

Okay, I believe we have a motion and a second for just that. And Deputy City Clerk, can you call roll call vote, please?

Thank you very much. And that will close this item. We'll move on to the next item.

Second. Okay, I believe we have effectively gotten a motion and a second. Deputy city clerk, could you please roll call vote for extending the meeting to 1130?

Thank you all. Okay, our next item is item 14, storm drain master plan update adoption. We thank presenting staff for their patience. We have with us Mr. James Yang, senior engineer, Mr. Jimmy Vo, engineering manager in public works. Thank you for being here.

Thank you very much. At this time, I would like to open it up for public comment, so if anyone would like to give a public comment, in chamber, online, this is your opportunity.

Thank you. I will close public comment. And we'll bring it back to the desk for questions and comments.

Thank you. Anyone else? Council Member Newsom?

Yeah, I'm sorry. I have a couple questions. First off, thanks for a great presentation. Excited to hear the news that we may be at some point soon getting the rest of our city off the FEMA flood map. A lot of that is in my district, and that is huge news. They will be so thrilled. So please make sure as soon as we know that you let us know. the other things i've heard a lot of while walking the district especially the last few months there's an underpass as it comes out under george hall where there's kind of an s turn or kind of a big bend they're saying a lot of the neighbors are saying they

Well, no, just more of a cleaning it out the culvert. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of silting in there, and I actually went and walked by it, and there's a lot of vegetation in there that they're saying, can we get that vegetation and get it out of the corn?

is one of the challenges from an environmental perspective, like frogs and snakes and things in areas where there are actual cement culverts. I mean, because if you look at like Southern California, there's miles and miles of cement culverts and they don't have that challenge of not being able to remove vegetation. So I'm just curious, where our creeks are actually running through concrete culverts? Is it environmental from a protective species?

I have an uncle who's a public works San Francisco employee of over 40 years, and he's retired, and he's threatening to bring him and his sons in there and cleaning it out if we don't get it done. So I told him we can't do that, and please don't do that. Or do it and just don't tell us. Yeah, right. Baywall... I've had people ask me, do we intend at some point to continue on? Like Foster City has installed a bay wall for bay level rise. Do we at some point intend to do that for San Mateo? And I've heard that Burlingame is also planning that. So I would imagine if we didn't, at some point there

Fantastic. Thank you. Two more little tiny things. One, an employee who works in one of the pump stations suggested to me that maybe some of the pumps which are older don't actually need to be replaced as much as they need to have modernized controls of the pumps. And I think I've mentioned this to you in the past. Has that been vetted out to see if there's any truth to that? Would it make sense to increase or more modernize the controls as opposed to completely replacing the pumps?

And then my last thing is a simple request is as we release things like the adopt the drain graphic or we update those, if we could get it out to the whole council so we can get it out to our networks, that would be really appreciated. Thank you so much. That's all my comments.

Just a couple of quickies. Number one, so excited to see this. This has been such a long time coming. I read that the community outreach meetings weren't that heavily attended, but that the tool generated 50 reports. So that might be something to think about going forward, that these kind of things, people don't want to go to wherever it is to tell you about what their issues are. But if you can find a way to get into their homes with online surveys or tools even more, this is where my problem is. Help me here. I just thought that was very, very promising, and it was good. And the other thing

And that's great, and I would volunteer, and I'm sure I would not be alone, to take a trip to Washington, D.C. to make this happen, because that's what it took last time. And so the more we could get the two of them together would be fantastic. Absolutely. I see Council Member Newsom nodding his head as well. And yep, that's it.

Indeed. I think, yes, I think the questions have been asked. There's a motion to approve the storm drain master plan update with a second, and the deputy city clerk, can we please have a roll call?

Yes, I move to extend the meeting to potentially 11.45, we don't have to get there.

Thank you for this. Any reports, announcements, committee updates? Okay, I do just wanna thank the clerk's office for an awesome Boards and Commissions celebration. I really felt it was above and beyond. I really appreciated it.

Okay. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Also a great shout out again to Julian and the entire San Mateo PD for all the work they've been doing for the Pink Patch. Yes. Great comment. Thanks.

And to San Mateo Consolidated Fire for the amazing fire operations.

Yes, I'm still sore from it. Very good. All right. Thank you. See, that was useful. That was nice. Okay. Onward to closed session. We will... Oh, take public comment on the closed session item, thank you.

Okay, I will close public comment and we will adjourn to closed session. Close enough, very good.